How long did the Buqus fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 26 July 2020 and 27 July 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 107 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Buqus (107 ha, 0.5 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Buqus and came within 6.2 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 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2020-07-26 → 2020-07-27

Buqus fire, 26 July 2020 بوقوس · Buqus

Out · last measured on 27 Jul 2020

The fire started on 26 July 2020 in Buqus, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 107 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 113th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 223 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Buqus · 2017 El Tarf · 2026 Bouteldja · 2022 ساقية سيدي يوسف · 2021

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area: 107ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 2days; 26 Jul 2020 – 27 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 26 Jul; 2020
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index

The weather it burned in

36°high

42km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 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

Buqus بوقوس 11,234 inhabitants · 6.2 km from the centre where it started

107 ha

0.5 %

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 forest90 %
Other natural land7.6 %
Broadleaved forest2.8 %

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)
26 Jul	34.6 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Jul	36.2 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Jul after	36.0 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Jul after	35.8 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Jul after	36.7 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Jul after	38.2 °C	8 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
1 Aug after	36.2 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
2 Aug after	36.9 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
3 Aug after	34.2 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 41
4 Aug after	26.5 °C	48 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Aug after	26.6 °C	36 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Aug after	27.7 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jul 2020

After · 3 Aug 2020

Before After

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 28 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1023 µg/m³

24252627282930

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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Buqus fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 26 July 2020 and 27 July 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 107 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Buqus (107 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Buqus and came within 6.2 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 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. No 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.

Where it burned