How long did the Beni Zmenzer fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 26 August 2026 and 26 August 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Beni Zmenzer (166 ha, 8.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Beni Zmenzer and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 45.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 80 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 103, class Very 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.

DZ · Algeria · 26 Aug 2026

Beni Zmenzer fire, August 2026 بني زمنزر · Beni Zmenzer

Out · last measured on 26 Aug 2026

The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Beni Zmenzer, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 165 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 158 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Beni Zmenzer · 2021 Iboudraren · 2021 Timezrit · 2023 Azazga · 2021

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.

Burnt area: 165ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 26 Aug 2026 – 26 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 26 Aug; 2026
Danger at start: 103; Very extreme · FWI index

The weather it burned in

45°high

80km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31 ha in 2021.

31 ha Beni Zmenzer fire, August 2021 3,656 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Beni Zmenzer بني زمنزر 12,117 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started

166 ha

8.0 %

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 forest67 %
Other natural land28 %
Artificial surfaces5.4 %

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)
26 Aug	45.1 °C	9 %	80 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 103
27 Aug after	44.8 °C	8 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
28 Aug after	31.0 °C	44 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Aug after	29.5 °C	63 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 Aug after	32.3 °C	57 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 Aug after	32.8 °C	61 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
1 Sept after	35.8 °C	49 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
2 Sept after	39.9 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
3 Sept after	35.6 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Sept after	33.9 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Sept after	34.8 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Sept after	37.5 °C	15 %	34 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.

↔

Before · 19 Aug 2026

After · 2 Sept 2026

Before After

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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1099 µg/m³

Optical depth0.95

WHO 15

24 Aug26 Aug28 Aug30 Aug

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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Beni Zmenzer fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 26 August 2026 and 26 August 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Beni Zmenzer (166 ha, 8.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Beni Zmenzer and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 45.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 80 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 103, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. No 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.

Where it burned