Beni Semiel fire, July 2026 بني صميل · Beni Semiel, Oued Lakhdar, Ouled Mimoun
The fire started on 15 July 2026 in Beni Semiel, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 5,270 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Tlemcen since 2016 (of 12 with a page). Number 14 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.8 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…
- Burnt area
- 5,270ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 15 Jul 2026 – 17 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 15 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 52MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
17 Jul 2026 · 52 MW · 11
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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2024.
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
-
2,693 ha reached on 17 Jul12 %
-
2,022 ha reached on 17 Jul15 %
-
570 ha6.3 %
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 forest43 %
- Other natural land40 %
- Broadleaved forest16 %
- Agricultural areas1.8 %
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 0.81 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 2 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- حرائق غابات بني صميل وأولاد ميمون والواد الأخضر · Béni Smaïl · Ouled Mimoun
Sources
- تلمسان : تواصل الجهود للسيطرة على حريق غابات أولاد ميمون — El Djoumhouria, 17 July 2026
- تلمسان: تواصل عمليات اخماد حرائق غابات دائرة أولاد ميمون — El Djoumhouria, 16 July 2026
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jul | 40.5 °C | 6 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 16 Jul | 39.7 °C | 5 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 17 Jul | 39.7 °C | 5 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Jul after | 40.2 °C | 5 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 19 Jul after | 40.5 °C | 6 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 20 Jul after | 40.8 °C | 5 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 21 Jul after | 40.5 °C | 6 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 22 Jul after | 40.8 °C | 5 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 23 Jul after | 40.7 °C | 6 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 24 Jul after | 38.8 °C | 9 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 25 Jul after | 31.5 °C | 18 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
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 18 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 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 · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,227 haBeni Semiel بني صميلJuly 2017 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 303 haAïn Fezza عين فزةAugust 2023 · 2 days · 13 km away
- 829 haMoulay Slissen مولاي سليسنJuly 2026 · 1 day · 26 km away
- 727 haMezaourou مزاوروSeptember 2016 · 3 days · 35 km away
- 472 haSidi Ali Benyoub سيدي علي بن يوبJune 2016 · 1 day · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Beni Semiel fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 17 July 2026 (3 days from 15 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 5,270 hectares (52.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Beni Semiel (2,693 ha, 12 %); Oued Lakhdar (2,022 ha, 15 %); Ouled Mimoun (570 ha, 6.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.6 km of the centre of Ouled Mimoun, 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 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 30 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 15 July 2026 → 17 July 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. 11 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 2 confirmed sources.
- 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.