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Azazga fire, August 2021 عزازقة · Azazga, Ifigha, Yakouren

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2021, 13:21 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2021 in Azazga, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,611 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 11 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Iloula Oumalou · 2021Iboudraren · 2021Zekri · 2021Beni Zmenzer · 2021

Burnt area
3,611ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
9 Aug 2021 – 12 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
5
communes
Started on
9 Aug
2021
Heat detections
53
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
76
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
191MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug12 Aug
11 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2021 · 170 MW · 35 11 Aug 2021 · 212 MW · 18
10 Aug 11 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

45°high
64km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Azazga عزازقة 34,683 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre where it started
    1,751 ha reached on 10 Aug
    23 %
  2. Ifigha إيفيغاء 9,160 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    1,430 ha reached on 10 Aug
    31 %
  3. Yakouren إعكوران 12,203 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre
    436 ha reached on 10 Aug
    5.4 %
  4. Souamaa الصوامع 9,954 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %
  5. Bouzguen بوزقن 24,311 inhabitants · 5.3 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 forest60 %
  • Other natural land32 %
  • Agricultural areas4.7 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.8 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.9 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area39 ha
Residents≈ 2,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 39 hectares of built-up land and about 2,600 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
9 Aug 44.9 °C 7 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
10 Aug 43.8 °C 7 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
11 Aug 43.5 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
12 Aug 42.8 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
13 Aug after 41.3 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
14 Aug after 41.6 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
15 Aug after 40.3 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Aug after 39.2 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Aug after 31.1 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug after 31.3 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Aug after 35.4 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Aug after 33.4 °C 44 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Aug after 37.4 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Aug 2021
After · 19 Aug 2021

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 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak112 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10221 µg/m³
7891011121314
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 · 53Every 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 Azazga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2021 to 12 August 2021 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2021 to 11 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,611 hectares (36.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Azazga (1,751 ha, 23 %); Ifigha (1,430 ha, 31 %); Yakouren (436 ha, 5.4 %); Souamaa (0 ha, 0.0 %); Bouzguen (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Ifigha: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, class Very 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 August 2021 to 11 August 2021. 53 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.