Chefia fire, 20 July 2026 الشافية · Chefia, Bouhadjar, Aïn Kerma
The fire started on 20 July 2026 in Chefia, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 763 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 26th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 67 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 763ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 1day
- 20 Jul 2026 – 20 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 20 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 10
- in a single hotspot: 75 MW
- Danger at start
- 73
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 439MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
20 Jul 2026 · 439 MW · 10
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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 27 Jul.
This area had burned before
45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 110 ha in 2017, 252 ha in 2020, 20 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 346 ha that had burned before.
- 168 ha Aïn Kerma fire, August 2020 248 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 85 ha Chefia fire, July 2020 113 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 24 ha Bouhadjar fire, July 2017 782 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 15 ha Bouhadjar fire, August 2024 192 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
-
463 ha reached on 20 Jul2.4 %
-
180 ha1.9 %
-
122 ha reached on 20 Jul1.1 %
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 forest83 %
- Other natural land14 %
- Broadleaved forest2.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jul | 46.2 °C | 6 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 21 Jul after | 46.7 °C | 6 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 22 Jul after | 44.3 °C | 10 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 23 Jul after | 43.3 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 24 Jul after | 37.8 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 25 Jul after | 42.2 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 26 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 27 Jul after | 30.5 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 2.3 mm | Moderate 21 |
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 23 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 151 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 79: 5.3 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 · 10Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,376 haEl Tarf الطارف25 August 2026 · 4 days · 18 km away
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس23 July 2017 · 13 days · 25 km away
- 5,857 haBeni Salah BoucheghoufAugust 2021 · 4 days · 25 km away
- 4,488 haBoucheghoufJuly 2017 · 9 days · 25 km away
- 6,415 haBouteldja بوثلجةAugust 2022 · 9 days · 31 km away
- 3,550 haساقية سيدي يوسفJuly 2021 · 5 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chefia fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (20 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 July 2026 (1 day from 20 July 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 763 hectares (7.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chefia (463 ha, 2.4 %); Bouhadjar (180 ha, 1.9 %); Aïn Kerma (122 ha, 1.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Chefia and came within 5.1 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 46.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 73, 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.
- 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. 10 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.
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.