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Buqus fire, 12 August 2020 بوقوس · Buqus

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2020, 12:05 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2020 in Buqus, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 103 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 116th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 228 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
103ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
12 Aug 2020 – 12 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
12 Aug
2020
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
131MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug12 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 44 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Buqus بوقوس 11,234 inhabitants · 4.7 km from the town where it started
    103 ha reached on 12 Aug
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Mixed forest84 %
  • Other natural land16 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %

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)
12 Aug 36.0 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug after 37.4 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 40
14 Aug after 35.6 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug after 34.8 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
16 Aug after 31.5 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Aug after 30.3 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Aug after 30.8 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Aug after 32.0 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Aug after 37.6 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Aug after 38.6 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Aug after 32.6 °C 54 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Aug 2020
After · 19 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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1037 µg/m³
101112131415
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 · 4Every 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 Buqus fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 August 2020 and 12 August 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 103 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Buqus (103 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 4.7 km of Buqus. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.