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Ben Allel fire, August 2020 بن علال، عين الدفلى · Ben Allel

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2020, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2020 in Ben Allel, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 112 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 57th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 215 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
112ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
9 Aug 2020 – 10 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
9 Aug
2020
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
93MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

91011

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
35km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 107 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Ben Allel بن علال، عين الدفلى 9,068 inhabitants · 11.7 km from the town where it started
    23 ha
    0.2 %

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

  • Other natural land84 %
  • Mixed forest16 %

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)
9 Aug 27.1 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Aug 28.7 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Aug after 29.6 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Aug after 26.5 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug after 25.4 °C 56 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Aug after 26.4 °C 51 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
15 Aug after 25.1 °C 63 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
16 Aug after 26.3 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
17 Aug after 25.3 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Aug after 24.5 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Aug after 26.9 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Aug after 26.8 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Aug 2020
After · 17 Aug 2020

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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1049 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 · 5Every 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 Ben Allel fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 9 August 2020 and 10 August 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 112 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ben Allel (23 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 11.7 km of Ben Allel. 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 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.