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Beni Ouarsous fire, July 2016 بني ورسوس · Beni Ouarsous, Honaine, Dar Yaghmouracene

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2016, 13:15 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2016 in Beni Ouarsous, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 992 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Tlemcen since 2016 (of 12 with a page). Number 4 in Algeria in 2016, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Honaine · 2016Beni Ouarsous · 2020Honaine · 2020Honaine · 2016

Burnt area
992ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
22 Jul 2016 – 23 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
4
communes
Started on
22 Jul
2016
Heat detections
72
in a single hotspot: 542 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2016 · 3,345 MW · 70 23 Jul 2016 · 53 MW · 2
22 Jul 23 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

29°high
37km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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 0.6% of the area of London (9.9 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 Ouarsous بني ورسوس 12,110 inhabitants · 8.7 km from the centre where it started
    626 ha reached on 22 Jul
    3.7 %
  2. Honaine هنين 5,408 inhabitants · 6.4 km from the centre
    190 ha reached on 22 Jul
    3.0 %
  3. Dar Yaghmouracene دار يغمراسن 6,331 inhabitants · 8.4 km from the centre
    148 ha reached on 22 Jul
    2.5 %
  4. Nedroma ندرومة 32,498 inhabitants · 10.2 km from the centre
    31 ha reached on 22 Jul
    0.4 %

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

  • Other natural land68 %
  • Mixed forest31 %
  • Agricultural areas1.1 %

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)
22 Jul 29.1 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Jul 27.3 °C 44 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jul after 26.8 °C 59 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
25 Jul after 28.5 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Jul after 30.0 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Jul after 27.8 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Jul after 28.0 °C 57 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Jul after 28.2 °C 59 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Jul after 28.4 °C 58 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
31 Jul after 33.3 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug after 30.3 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Aug after 28.6 °C 62 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2016
After · 30 Jul 2016

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 22 July 2016 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 72: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10152 µg/m³
20212223242526
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 · 72Every 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 Ouarsous fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 22 July 2016 and 23 July 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 992 hectares (9.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Beni Ouarsous (626 ha, 3.7 %); Honaine (190 ha, 3.0 %); Dar Yaghmouracene (148 ha, 2.5 %); Nedroma (31 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 6.4 km of the centre of Honaine, 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 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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. 72 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.