Boukhelifa fire, 10 August 2021 بوخليفة · Barbacha, Kendira, Boukhelifa
The fire started on 10 August 2021 in Boukhelifa, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,699 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 5 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,699ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 10 Aug 2021 – 16 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 290
- in a single hotspot: 153 MW
- Danger at start
- 75
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 881MW
- 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 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 17 Aug.
This area had burned before
6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 343 ha in 2017, 39 ha in 2020.
- 234 ha Tala Hamza fire, August 2017 1,004 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 110 ha Kendira fire, July 2017 109 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Boukhelifa fire, July 2020 482 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
2,454 ha reached on 11 Aug29 %
-
1,810 ha reached on 12 Aug39 %
-
1,600 ha reached on 10 Aug14 %
-
849 ha reached on 12 Aug7.7 %
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 land32 %
- Agricultural areas1.0 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Boukhlifa · Boukhélifa · Incendies de Béjaïa
- According to the sources, several fires that ended up merging:
- Barbacha (village Aït Sid-Ali) 11 August 2021
- Boukhlifa 11 August 2021
- Toudja / El-Kseur / Aokas (otros focos simultáneos en la wilaya) 11 August 2021
Sources
- Le bilan des dégâts des feux de forêt de l'été 2021 révélé — Observalgerie, 11 May 2022
- Incendies de forêt en Algérie : d'Aïn El Hammam à Barbacha, la désolation qui rend plus fort — Middle East Eye (edicion francesa), 19 August 2021
- Cinq morts dans des incendies à Béjaïa — Liberté (Argelia), 12 August 2021
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Aug | 45.7 °C | 8 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 11 Aug | 43.1 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 12 Aug | 41.5 °C | 12 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 13 Aug | 37.7 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Aug | 37.6 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Aug | 38.6 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Aug | 37.7 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 71 % | 41 km/h | 2.0 mm | Low 8 |
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 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 151 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.2 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 · 290Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,274 haTichy تيشيAugust 2026 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 18,731 haDarguina درقينة19 August 2026 · 13 days · 24 km away
- 3,720 haBeni Djellil بني جليلJuly 2023 · 6 days · 25 km away
- 9,887 haToudja توجةAugust 2021 · 7 days · 26 km away
- 3,264 haToudja توجةAugust 2026 · 3 days · 26 km away
- 14,233 haTaourirt Ighil تاوريرت آغيلJuly 2023 · 8 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Boukhelifa fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2021 and 16 August 2021: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 6,699 hectares (67.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Barbacha (2,454 ha, 29 %); Kendira (1,810 ha, 39 %); Boukhelifa (1,600 ha, 14 %); Amizour (849 ha, 7.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Boukhelifa 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 45.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 290 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 3 confirmed sources.
- 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.