Skip to content
worldfires
DZ · Algeria · –

Djebahia fire, July 2023 الجباحية · Djebahia, Ain Turk

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2023, 02:33 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2023 in Djebahia, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,651 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 8 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Burnt area
2,651ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
24 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
24 Jul
2023
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 268 MW
Danger at start
108
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul25 Jul
25 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jul 2023 · 6,358 MW · 142 25 Jul 2023 · 7 MW · 2
24 Jul 25 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
63km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Djebahia الجباحية 15,592 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    1,787 ha reached on 24 Jul
    25 %
  2. Ain Turk عين الترك 7,849 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the centre
    449 ha reached on 24 Jul
    11 %

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

  • Mixed forest55 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.7 %
  • Agricultural areas2.2 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area5.1 ha
Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.1 hectares of built-up land and about 700 residents (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)

Started with Extreme FWI: 48 % of the area in Algeria Strong wind: 18 % of the area in Algeria Very dry air: 26 % of the area in Algeria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
24 Jul 42.2 °C 3 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 108
25 Jul 33.5 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Jul after 31.8 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jul after 37.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
28 Jul after 34.6 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
29 Jul after 32.4 °C 55 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jul after 32.9 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul after 33.1 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Aug after 32.2 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug after 34.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Aug after 35.9 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Aug after 28.4 °C 51 % 49 km/h 1.2 mm Very high 41

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 108.2, a minimum humidity of 3% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 1.

FWI at the start 108.2
Minimum humidity 3 %
Days without rain 3
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Bouhatem fire, August 2026
278 ha 1 day FWI 104.9 Min. humidity 11 % 204 km away, in 2026

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 30 Aug.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.2 mmfirst rain
4 Aug10 days after it ended
63km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 25 Jul, and on 4 Aug 1.2 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2023
After · 1 Aug 2023

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 27 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak44 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10188 µg/m³
Optical depth1.32
22 Jul24 Jul26 Jul28 Jul
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 · 144Every 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 Djebahia fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2023 and 25 July 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,651 hectares (26.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Djebahia (1,787 ha, 25 %); Ain Turk (449 ha, 11 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Djebahia and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 108, class Very 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 144 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.

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.