How long did the Chefia fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2020 to 6 August 2020 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 July 2020 to 1 August 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 710 hectares (7.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chefia (687 ha, 3.6 %); Bouteldja (24 ha, 0.2 %); Zitouna (0 ha, 0.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Chefia and came within 5.3 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 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2020-07-29 → 2020-08-06

Chefia fire, 29 July 2020 الشافية · Chefia, Bouteldja, Zitouna

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2020, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Chefia, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 710 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 33 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chefia · 2017 El Tarf · 2026 Buqus · 2017 Bouteldja · 2022

Burnt area: 710ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 9days; 29 Jul 2020 – 6 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 3; communes
Started on: 29 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 61; in a single hotspot: 313 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 326MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul6 Aug

Play back 6 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 5 Aug 6 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

44km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 70 ha in 2017.

70 ha Chefia fire, July 2017 102 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (7.1 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Chefia الشافية 8,195 inhabitants · 5.3 km from the centre where it started

687 ha reached on 29 Jul

3.6 %
Bouteldja بوثلجة 17,738 inhabitants · 17.9 km from the centre

24 ha reached on 30 Jul

0.2 %
Zitouna الزيتونة 9,736 inhabitants · 6.2 km from the centre

0 ha reached on 31 Jul

0.0 %

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 forest95 %
Other natural land4.2 %
Agricultural areas0.6 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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	Danger (FWI)
29 Jul	35.0 °C	25 %	44 km/h	Very high 45
30 Jul	35.9 °C	24 %	42 km/h	Very high 45
31 Jul	37.1 °C	17 %	33 km/h	Very high 48
1 Aug	34.3 °C	28 %	35 km/h	Very high 44
2 Aug	34.7 °C	22 %	34 km/h	Very high 42
3 Aug	31.3 °C	47 %	39 km/h	High 36
4 Aug	27.7 °C	52 %	39 km/h	High 29
5 Aug	27.3 °C	43 %	40 km/h	High 28
6 Aug	27.7 °C	47 %	38 km/h	High 29
7 Aug after	28.0 °C	47 %	35 km/h	High 27
8 Aug after	28.6 °C	51 %	40 km/h	High 29
9 Aug after	29.1 °C	44 %	37 km/h	High 28
10 Aug after	30.8 °C	38 %	42 km/h	High 34
11 Aug after	34.5 °C	33 %	40 km/h	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jul 2020

After · 13 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 31 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1047 µg/m³

WHO 15

2728293031123456789

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 · 61Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chefia fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2020 to 6 August 2020 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 July 2020 to 1 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 710 hectares (7.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chefia (687 ha, 3.6 %); Bouteldja (24 ha, 0.2 %); Zitouna (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Chefia and came within 5.3 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 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 July 2020 to 1 August 2020. 61 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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