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Darguina fire, 11 August 2021 درقينة · Darguina, Taskriout

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2021, 01:41 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2021 in Darguina, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 132 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 81th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 71 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aokas · 2019Darguina · 2026Melbou · 2023Tichy · 2026

Burnt area
132ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
11 Aug 2021 – 15 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
11 Aug
2021
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 4 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
12MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 2021 · 12 MW · 3

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
36km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 75 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Darguina درقينة 14,146 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre where it started
    127 ha reached on 12 Aug
    1.5 %
  2. Taskriout
    5 ha
    0.2 %

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

  • Other natural land75 %
  • Mixed forest25 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
11 Aug 37.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Aug 36.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
13 Aug 33.6 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Aug 32.6 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Aug 33.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Aug after 34.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
17 Aug after 28.1 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Aug after 26.3 °C 55 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Aug after 30.2 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
20 Aug after 28.7 °C 52 % 35 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 20
21 Aug after 29.6 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
22 Aug after 31.2 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2021
After · 22 Aug 2021

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 12 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1089 µg/m³
9101112131415
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 · 3Every 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 Darguina fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 August 2021 to 15 August 2021 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2021 to 12 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 132 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Darguina (127 ha, 1.5 %); Taskriout (5 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Darguina and came within 1.1 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 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class 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.

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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2021 to 12 August 2021. 3 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.