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Beni Bechir fire, August 2021 بني بشير · Azzaba, Beni Bechir

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2021, 13:02 UTC

The fire started on 7 August 2021 in Beni Bechir, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 328 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 43th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 44 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Azzaba · 2017Azzaba · 2026Ben Azouz · 2026Ain Charchar · 2026

Burnt area
328ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
7 Aug 2021 – 12 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
7 Aug
2021
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
327MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Aug12 Aug
12 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

7 Aug 2021 · 47 MW · 2 11 Aug 2021 · 310 MW · 4 12 Aug 2021 · 623 MW · 9
7 Aug 11 Aug 12 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

40°high
41km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 214 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Azzaba عزابة 56,922 inhabitants · 9.2 km from the centre
    200 ha reached on 7 Aug
    1.2 %
  2. Beni Bechir بني بشير 9,640 inhabitants · 6.9 km from the centre where it started
    129 ha reached on 7 Aug
    2.9 %

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 land37 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
7 Aug 34.8 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Aug 31.8 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug 34.0 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Aug 39.6 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Aug 38.8 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Aug 36.4 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug after 34.0 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Aug after 31.6 °C 50 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Aug after 33.7 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Aug after 36.1 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Aug after 27.9 °C 66 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Aug after 26.1 °C 60 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Aug after 29.3 °C 51 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Aug after 28.5 °C 62 % 35 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 · 31 Jul 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.

Detections table · 15Every 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 Beni Bechir fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2021 to 12 August 2021 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2021 to 10 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 328 hectares (3.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Azzaba (200 ha, 1.2 %); Beni Bechir (129 ha, 2.9 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Beni Bechir and came within 6.9 km of its centre. 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 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 August 2021 → 12 August 2021.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 August 2021 to 10 August 2021. 15 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.