Ben Azouz fire, July 2026 بن عزوز · Djendel Saadi Mohamed, Ben Azouz, Ain Charchar
The fire started on 19 July 2026 in Ben Azouz, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,207 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 16 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,207ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 19 Jul 2026 – 21 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 19 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 148
- in a single hotspot: 272 MW
- Danger at start
- 67
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.0GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 27 Jul.
This area had burned before
17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 136 ha in 2017, 549 ha in 2019, 65 ha in 2020.
- 549 ha Djendel Saadi Mohamed fire, August 2019 786 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 136 ha Djendel Saadi Mohamed fire, July 2017 185 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 65 ha Djendel Saadi Mohamed fire, August 2020 273 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,239 ha reached on 19 Jul10 %
-
1,225 ha reached on 19 Jul5.1 %
-
749 ha reached on 21 Jul6.5 %
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 forest63 %
- Other natural land31 %
- Agricultural areas5.4 %
- Broadleaved forest0.6 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.6 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Jul | 47.0 °C | 6 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 20 Jul | 48.2 °C | 6 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 21 Jul | 48.0 °C | 6 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 22 Jul after | 44.8 °C | 11 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 23 Jul after | 41.0 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 24 Jul after | 37.0 °C | 29 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Jul after | 36.8 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 26 Jul after | 33.5 °C | 29 % | 24 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Jul after | 31.0 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 1.5 mm | High 25 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 231 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 101: 6.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 148Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 14,609 haAin Charchar عين شرشار17 July 2026 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 5,623 haAzzaba عزابةAugust 2026 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 20,949 haEulma العلمةAugust 2026 · 3 days · 25 km away
- 3,917 haBerrahal برحالAugust 2020 · 7 days · 25 km away
- 11,190 haOued El AnebJuly 2026 · 8 days · 34 km away
- 3,718 haSeraidi وادي العنبAugust 2021 · 4 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ben Azouz fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (19 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 21 July 2026 (3 days from 19 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,207 hectares (42.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Djendel Saadi Mohamed (2,239 ha, 10 %); Ben Azouz (1,225 ha, 5.1 %); Ain Charchar (749 ha, 6.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 2.6 km of the centre of Djendel Saadi Mohamed, 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 48.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 83, 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 148 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.