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Darguina fire, 1 August 2026 درقينة · Darguina, Kherrata, Oued El Bared

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2026, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2026 in Darguina, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 626 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 78 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Burnt area
626ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
1 Aug 2026 – 1 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
1 Aug
2026
Heat detections
32
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
286MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug1 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
39km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 20 Aug.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 45 ha in 2019, 237 ha in 2020, 99 ha in 2021, 59 ha in 2023, 5 ha in 2024, 11 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 379 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Darguina درقينة 14,146 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the town where it started
    583 ha reached on 1 Aug
    6.9 %
  2. Kherrata خراطة،بجاية 35,077 inhabitants · 4.4 km from the town
    44 ha reached on 2 Aug
    0.4 %
  3. Oued El Bared واد البارد 2,333 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the town
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Other natural land83 %
  • Mixed forest17 %

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)
1 Aug 35.0 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug after 38.0 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Aug after 37.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
4 Aug after 35.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Aug after 31.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Aug after 31.6 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug after 32.7 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug after 34.1 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Aug after 36.8 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Aug after 36.4 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Aug after 36.5 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Aug after 36.0 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Aug after 33.1 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Aug after 31.2 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Aug after 33.5 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
16 Aug after 34.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug after 35.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Aug after 33.5 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Aug after 36.3 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Aug after 34.1 °C 20 % 54 km/h 1.7 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2026
After · 8 Aug 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 13 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1078 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
303112345678910111213
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 · 32Every 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?
Copernicus dates it between 1 August 2026 and 1 August 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 626 hectares (6.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Darguina (583 ha, 6.9 %); Kherrata (44 ha, 0.4 %); Oued El Bared (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.7 km of Darguina. 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 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very 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.