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Bouzguen fire, July 2020 بوزقن · Bouzguen, Idjer

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2020, 12:30 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Bouzguen, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 419 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 16th largest in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 71 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Iloula Oumalou · 2021Azazga · 2021Zekri · 2021Iboudraren · 2021

Burnt area
419ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
29 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
29 Jul
2020
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
83MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 2020 · 85 MW · 3 30 Jul 2020 · 125 MW · 13 31 Jul 2020 · 40 MW · 2
29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
39km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Bouzguen بوزقن 24,311 inhabitants · 2.2 km from the centre where it started
    319 ha reached on 29 Jul
    4.6 %
  2. Idjer إجر 10,301 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre
    101 ha reached on 29 Jul
    1.4 %

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 forest65 %
  • Other natural land30 %
  • Agricultural areas5.9 %

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)
29 Jul 30.2 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
30 Jul 30.3 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 30.7 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug after 27.7 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Aug after 29.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Aug after 26.7 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Aug after 22.3 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
5 Aug after 23.0 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Aug after 22.8 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Aug after 24.5 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug after 25.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug after 26.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Aug after 26.9 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 22 Jul 2020
After · 7 Aug 2020

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 3 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1044 µg/m³
2728293031123
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)

Detections table · 18Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bouzguen fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2020 and 31 July 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 419 hectares (4.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bouzguen (319 ha, 4.6 %); Idjer (101 ha, 1.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bouzguen and came within 2.2 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 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

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?

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. 18 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.