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Amizour fire, October 2023 أميزور · Amizour, Boukhelifa, Tala Hamza

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2023, 00:45 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2023 in Amizour, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,549 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 11 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tala Hamza · 2017Tala Hamza · 2017Boukhelifa · 2021Tichy · 2026

Burnt area
1,549ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
18 Oct 2023 – 24 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
18 Oct
2023
Heat detections
146
in a single hotspot: 188 MW
Danger at start
67
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
914MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct24 Oct
24 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 2023 · 993 MW · 45 19 Oct 2023 · 1,811 MW · 40 20 Oct 2023 · 828 MW · 46 24 Oct 2023 · 22 MW · 15
18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 24 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
66km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 707 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Amizour أميزور 37,562 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the centre where it started
    910 ha reached on 18 Oct
    8.3 %
  2. Boukhelifa بوخليفة 8,766 inhabitants · 6.6 km from the centre
    326 ha reached on 18 Oct
    2.8 %
  3. Tala Hamza تالة حمزة 11,675 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre
    316 ha reached on 18 Oct
    8.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Mixed forest64 %
  • Other natural land35 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
18 Oct 33.2 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Oct 31.2 °C 16 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Oct 26.9 °C 19 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Oct 23.2 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Oct 27.2 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Oct 31.0 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Oct 22.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 3.0 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 11 Oct 2023
After · 31 Oct 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 19 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak67 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10161 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
161718192021222324252627
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 146Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Amizour fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2023 to 24 October 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2023 to 23 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,549 hectares (15.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Amizour (910 ha, 8.3 %); Boukhelifa (326 ha, 2.8 %); Tala Hamza (316 ha, 8.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.1 km of the centre of Tala Hamza, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 14 · 1021 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 14 · 1021.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 October 2023 to 23 October 2023. 146 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.