Darguina fire, 22 July 2026 درقينة · Darguina, Oued El Bared
The fire started on 22 July 2026 in Darguina, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 500 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 83 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
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- Burnt area
- 500ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 23days
- 22 Jul 2026 – 13 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 22 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 50
- in a single hotspot: 66 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 143MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 23 Aug.
This area had burned before
43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 182 ha in 2019, 20 ha in 2020, 2 ha in 2023, 1 ha in 2024, 24 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 216 ha that had burned before.
- 182 ha Oued El Bared fire, August 2019 240 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Darguina fire, July 2020 105 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Darguina fire, July 2025 128 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
-
363 ha reached on 22 Jul4.3 %
-
137 ha reached on 23 Jul2.8 %
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 land86 %
- Mixed forest13 %
- Agricultural areas1.0 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Jul | 34.8 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Jul | 34.7 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 37 |
| 24 Jul | 32.0 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 25 Jul | 31.1 °C | 44 % | 26 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 28 |
| 26 Jul | 27.8 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Jul | 25.4 °C | 61 % | 38 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Jul | 26.8 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 29 Jul | 27.7 °C | 53 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 Jul | 28.5 °C | 45 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 31 Jul | 29.5 °C | 44 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Aug | 29.9 °C | 43 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 2 Aug | 32.8 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 2.4 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 3 Aug | 32.0 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Aug | 30.0 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Aug | 27.2 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Aug | 27.7 °C | 48 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 7 Aug | 27.9 °C | 50 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 8 Aug | 29.3 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 9 Aug | 31.8 °C | 34 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Aug | 31.1 °C | 34 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Aug | 31.5 °C | 35 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Aug | 30.8 °C | 36 % | 22 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Aug | 29.1 °C | 53 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 14 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 54 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 47 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 45 % | 24 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 44 % | 26 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 44 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 19 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 20 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 44 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 23 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 30 % | 44 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 26 |
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 26 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 270 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 100: 6.6 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 · 50Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 18,731 haDarguina درقينة19 August 2026 · 13 days · 7 km away
- 3,042 haMelbou ملبوJuly 2023 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 2,444 haTichy تيشيOctober 2023 · 5 days · 22 km away
- 3,957 haEraguene إيراقن سويسيAugust 2026 · 4 days · 24 km away
- 3,274 haTichy تيشيAugust 2026 · 3 days · 26 km away
- 6,699 haBoukhelifa بوخليفة10 August 2021 · 7 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Darguina fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (22 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 13 August 2026 (23 days from 22 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 500 hectares (5.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Darguina (363 ha, 4.3 %); Oued El Bared (137 ha, 2.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 2.8 km of the centre of Oued El Bared, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 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. 50 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.