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Collo fire, July 2026 Cheraia, Collo

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2026, 13:44 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2026 in Collo, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 804 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 65 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Burnt area
804ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 Jul 2026 – 17 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
17 Jul
2026
Heat detections
109
in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
431MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul17 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

1718

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
33km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 27 Jul.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 66 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

  1. Cheraia الشرايع 18,759 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the town
    547 ha reached on 18 Jul
    8.0 %
  2. Collo where it started
    256 ha reached on 17 Jul
    11 %

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 forest97 %
  • Other natural land2.0 %
  • Coniferous forest0.8 %

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)
17 Jul 35.2 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Jul after 32.2 °C 37 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
19 Jul after 34.2 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
20 Jul after 36.7 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Jul after 37.8 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul after 31.9 °C 39 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Jul after 30.5 °C 56 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Jul after 29.4 °C 69 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
25 Jul after 32.0 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul after 28.8 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Jul after 27.2 °C 63 % 38 km/h 2.1 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2026
After · 24 Jul 2026

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 20 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 72: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak117 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10177 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
151617181920
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 · 109Every 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 Collo fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2026 and 17 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 804 hectares (8.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cheraia (547 ha, 8.0 %); Collo (256 ha, 11 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.6 km of Cheraia. 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 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.