Skip to content
worldfires
en
DZ · Algeria · →

Beni Bouattab fire, October 2020 بني بوعتاب · Boucaid, Beni Bouattab, Lazharia

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2020, 02:00 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2020 in Beni Bouattab, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 139 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in Aïn Defla since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 183 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.7 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: Beni Bouattab · 2017Boucaid · 2017Bathia · 2020Larbaa · 2016

Burnt area
139ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
8 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
8 Oct
2020
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
25MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct11 Oct
11 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

8 Oct 2020 · 13 MW · 2 9 Oct 2020 · 14 MW · 1 10 Oct 2020 · 72 MW · 9 11 Oct 2020 · 0 MW · 1
8 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
41km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 58 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Boucaid بوقايد 8,843 inhabitants · 5.5 km from the centre
    110 ha reached on 10 Oct
    1.7 %
  2. Beni Bouattab بني بوعتاب 2,069 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre where it started
    23 ha reached on 8 Oct
    0.2 %
  3. Lazharia الأزهرية 8,071 inhabitants · 8.5 km from the centre
    6 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.0 %

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 forest82 %
  • Other natural land13 %
  • Agricultural areas2.9 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.2 %

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)
8 Oct 30.6 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Oct 30.3 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct 27.8 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Oct 23.9 °C 52 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Oct after 19.2 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
13 Oct after 23.3 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Oct after 24.5 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Oct after 21.3 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
16 Oct after 21.7 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Oct after 22.7 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Oct after 25.7 °C 19 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Oct after 28.6 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Oct after 30.4 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Oct after 28.7 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Oct 2020
After · 18 Oct 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.

Detections table · 13Every 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?
Copernicus dates it between 8 October 2020 and 11 October 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 139 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Boucaid (110 ha, 1.7 %); Beni Bouattab (23 ha, 0.2 %); Lazharia (6 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 5.5 km of the centre of Boucaid, 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 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · 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. 13 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.