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Azeffoun fire, 24 October 2022 أزفون · Azeffoun

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2022, 12:31 UTC

The fire started on 24 October 2022 in Azeffoun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 125 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 48 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.

Burnt area
125ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
24 Oct 2022 – 25 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
24 Oct
2022
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
201MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Oct 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Oct25 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2425

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
34km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.1 mm on 4 Nov.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016, 2 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Azeffoun أزفون 16,847 inhabitants · 10.6 km from the town where it started
    125 ha reached on 24 Oct
    1.0 %

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

What burned

  • Mixed forest98 %
  • Other natural land1.6 %

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)
24 Oct 29.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Oct 30.3 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Oct after 29.9 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Oct after 29.5 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Oct after 28.8 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Oct after 28.1 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Oct after 26.0 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
31 Oct after 27.6 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Nov after 25.8 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Nov after 27.0 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Nov after 27.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Nov after 21.6 °C 57 % 63 km/h 23.1 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Oct 2022
After · 1 Nov 2022

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 24 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1046 µg/m³
Optical depth0.53
22232425262728
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 · 11Every 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 Azeffoun fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 October 2022 and 25 October 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 125 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Azeffoun (125 ha, 1.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 10.6 km of Azeffoun. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.