Bouinan fire, October 2022 بوينان · Bouinan, Hammam Melouane
The fire started on 23 October 2022 in Bouinan, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 134 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 35th largest in Blida since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 45 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.
The power measured by the satellite is low (9.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 134ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 23 Oct 2022 – 24 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 23 Oct
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 6
- in a single hotspot: 9 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 16MW
- 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 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
101 ha reached on 23 Oct1.4 %
-
32 ha reached on 23 Oct0.2 %
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 land59 %
- Mixed forest41 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.45 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct | 29.9 °C | 20 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Oct | 29.1 °C | 18 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 25 Oct after | 29.9 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 26 Oct after | 29.4 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 27 Oct after | 29.6 °C | 18 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 28 Oct after | 28.4 °C | 24 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Oct after | 28.1 °C | 21 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 30 Oct after | 25.9 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 31 Oct after | 27.5 °C | 26 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 1 Nov after | 25.6 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 2 Nov after | 25.8 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 3 Nov after | 26.0 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 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 24 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 6Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,152 haBouinan بوينانJuly 2026 · 2 days · 2 km away
- 1,520 haSouhane صوحانJuly 2023 · 3 days · 17 km away
- 2,035 haBaata بعطة11 July 2017 · 4 days · 21 km away
- 901 haSouhane صوحان6 July 2017 · 8 days · 24 km away
- 1,698 haBouchrahil بوشراحيلJuly 2019 · 8 days · 25 km away
- 3,849 haDeux Bassins فج الحوضينAugust 2021 · 6 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bouinan fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 23 October 2022 and 24 October 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 134 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bouinan (101 ha, 1.4 %); Hammam Melouane (32 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.4 km of the centre of Hammam Melouane, 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 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6 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.
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.