Bir El Hammam fire, September 2016 واد تاوريرة · Bir El Hammam
The fire started on 3 September 2016 in Bir El Hammam, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,508 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
The largest in Algeria in 2016, of 62.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,508ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 3 Sept 2016 – 8 Sept 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 3 Sept
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 74
- in a single hotspot: 273 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 189MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 10 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
1,516 ha reached on 3 Sept1.1 %
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
- Other natural land73 %
- Agricultural areas23 %
- Mixed forest3.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 33.9 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Sept | 34.0 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 6 Sept | 34.2 °C | 13 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 7 Sept | 34.0 °C | 14 % | 47 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 8 Sept | 31.6 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 2.3 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 22 |
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 6 September 2016 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 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 · 74Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bir El Hammam fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2016 to 8 September 2016 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 September 2016 to 8 September 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,508 hectares (15.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bir El Hammam (1,516 ha, 1.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Bir El Hammam and came within 9.8 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 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 September 2016 to 8 September 2016. 74 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.
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.