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Belkheir fire, July 2024 Belkheir, Khezara

Out · last measured on 21 Jul 2024

The fire started on 21 July 2024 in Belkheir, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 683 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Guelma since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 4 in Algeria in 2024, of 14.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djebala Khemissi · 2026Eulma · 2026Ain Charchar · 2026Beni Salah · 2021

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
683ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
21 Jul 2024 – 21 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
21 Jul
2024
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

42°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days 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 0.4% of the area of London (6.8 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. Belkheir where it started
    504 ha
    5.4 %
  2. Khezara لخزارة 10,382 inhabitants · 5.8 km from the centre
    179 ha
    2.4 %

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

  • Agricultural areas53 %
  • Other natural land37 %
  • Mixed forest9.9 %

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)
21 Jul 41.6 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Jul after 30.2 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul after 29.8 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul after 32.5 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Jul after 35.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jul after 36.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
27 Jul after 36.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul after 38.9 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Jul after 37.6 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jul after 37.4 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jul after 39.8 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2024
After · 28 Jul 2024

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 21 July 2024 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
PM1064 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
192021222324
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Belkheir fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 21 July 2024 and 21 July 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 683 hectares (6.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Belkheir (504 ha, 5.4 %); Khezara (179 ha, 2.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 5.8 km of the centre of Khezara, 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 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.