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Beni Bouattab fire, 11 July 2017 بني بوعتاب · Beni Bouattab, Boucaid, Lazharia

Out · last detection 13 Jul 2017, 13:58 UTC

The fire started on 11 July 2017 in Beni Bouattab, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 514 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Aïn Defla since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 33 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bathia · 2020Larbaa · 2016Lardjem · 2019Lardjem · 2019

Burnt area
514ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
11 Jul 2017 – 17 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
11 Jul
2017
Heat detections
10
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
44MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jul17 Jul
13 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2017 · 43 MW · 5 13 Jul 2017 · 44 MW · 5
12 Jul 13 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
42km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 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 0.3% of the area of London (5.1 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. Beni Bouattab بني بوعتاب 2,069 inhabitants · 4.5 km from the centre where it started
    447 ha reached on 12 Jul
    3.7 %
  2. Boucaid بوقايد 8,843 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre
    56 ha reached on 13 Jul
    0.9 %
  3. Lazharia الأزهرية 8,071 inhabitants · 8.4 km from the centre
    12 ha
    0.1 %

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 forest88 %
  • Other natural land12 %

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)
11 Jul 42.7 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.8 mm Extreme 50
12 Jul 42.4 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Jul 41.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Jul 41.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Jul 36.8 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Jul 36.1 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul 36.8 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul after 37.9 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul after 39.0 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.7 mm Extreme 51
20 Jul after 37.3 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jul after 34.7 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Jul after 38.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jul after 38.8 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 45
24 Jul after 35.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jul 2017
After · 24 Jul 2017

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 11 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1049 µg/m³
91011121314151617
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 · 10Every 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 Bouattab fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 July 2017 to 17 July 2017 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 July 2017 to 14 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 514 hectares (5.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Beni Bouattab (447 ha, 3.7 %); Boucaid (56 ha, 0.9 %); Lazharia (12 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Beni Bouattab and came within 4.5 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 42.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 July 2017 to 14 July 2017. 10 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.