Chihani fire, August 2025 الشيحاني · Chihani, Asfour
The fire started on 29 August 2025 in Chihani, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 738 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 28th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 4 in Algeria in 2025, of 35.
- Burnt area
- 738ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 29 Aug 2025 – 31 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 42
- in a single hotspot: 42 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 10 Sept.
This area had burned before
48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 194 ha in 2016, 16 ha in 2017, 69 ha in 2019, 227 ha in 2020, 26 ha in 2022, 8 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 357 ha that had burned before.
- 227 ha Asfour fire, July 2020 461 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 120 ha Chihani fire, July 2016 168 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 73 ha Asfour fire, July 2016 155 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 26 ha Hammam Beni Salah fire, August 2022 2,887 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 16 ha Chihani fire, August 2017 271 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
389 ha reached on 27 Aug1.9 %
-
351 ha reached on 27 Aug3.3 %
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 forest74 %
- Other natural land21 %
- Broadleaved forest4.9 %
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 Aug | 28.0 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Aug | 27.5 °C | 51 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Aug | 30.2 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Sept after | 26.2 °C | 55 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Sept after | 27.0 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 43 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Sept after | 27.6 °C | 59 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Sept after | 30.1 °C | 53 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 7 Sept after | 33.1 °C | 37 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Sept after | 22.5 °C | 79 % | 31 km/h | 6.7 mm | Very low 0 |
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 27 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 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 · 42Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,857 haBeni Salah BoucheghoufAugust 2021 · 4 days · 16 km away
- 4,488 haBoucheghoufAugust 2017 · 6 days · 16 km away
- 6,376 haEl Tarf الطارف25 August 2026 · 4 days · 29 km away
- 9,006 haDjebala Khemissi جبالة لخميسيJuly 2026 · 1 day · 35 km away
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس29 July 2017 · 6 days · 38 km away
- 6,415 haBouteldja بوثلجةAugust 2022 · 2 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chihani fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 August 2025 and 31 August 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 738 hectares (7.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chihani (389 ha, 1.9 %); Asfour (351 ha, 3.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.5 km of Asfour. 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 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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
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.