Bounouh fire, August 2026 بونوح · Boghni, Bounouh, Taghzout
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Bounouh, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,760 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 40 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,760ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 28 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 112 MW
- Danger at start
- 103
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 207MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 455 ha in 2019, 165 ha in 2020, 80 ha in 2023, 37 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 668 ha that had burned before.
- 394 ha Boghni fire, August 2019 492 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 165 ha Boghni fire, July 2020 165 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Taghzout fire, June 2019 121 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
-
1,095 ha reached on 26 Aug21 %
-
647 ha reached on 26 Aug24 %
-
11 ha0.2 %
-
7 ha0.3 %
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 forest61 %
- Other natural land38 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 55 %
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 7.7 hectares of built-up land and about 650 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
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 | 44.8 °C | 8 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 28 Aug | 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.
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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,651 haDjebahia الجباحيةJuly 2023 · 2 days · 17 km away
- 3,656 haBeni Zmenzer بني زمنزرAugust 2021 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 26,745 haIboudraren إبودرارنAugust 2021 · 10 days · 27 km away
- 2,736 haTimezrit تيمزريتJuly 2023 · 2 days · 28 km away
- 4,202 haMaalaJune 2023 · 6 days · 35 km away
- 2,687 haZbarbar معالة20 July 2023 · 6 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bounouh fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 August 2026 (3 days from 26 August 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 1,760 hectares (17.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Boghni (1,095 ha, 21 %); Bounouh (647 ha, 24 %); Taghzout (11 ha, 0.2 %); Assi Youcef (7 ha, 0.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Bounouh and came within 1.1 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 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
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.
- 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. 23 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 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.