El Aioun fire, July 2017 العيون · El Aioun
The fire started on 30 July 2017 in El Aioun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 183 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
Number 106 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.
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- Burnt area
- 183ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 30 Jul 2017 – 1 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 18
- in a single hotspot: 118 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 189MW
- 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 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 11 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
184 ha reached on 30 Jul4.1 %
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 forest60 %
- Other natural land38 %
- Agricultural areas1.7 %
- Broadleaved forest0.6 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jul | 39.1 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 1 Aug | 37.9 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Aug after | 35.0 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Aug after | 37.5 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Aug after | 37.2 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Aug after | 33.4 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Aug after | 36.1 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Aug after | 36.0 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 60 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 11 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 53 % | 39 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 16 |
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 4 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 265 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 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 · 18Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,599 haSouarekh السوارخJuly 2017 · 5 days · 5 km away
- 1,820 haSouarekh السوارخAugust 2022 · 1 day · 5 km away
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس23 July 2017 · 13 days · 24 km away
- 6,415 haBouteldja بوثلجةAugust 2022 · 9 days · 24 km away
- 2,697 haBuqus بوقوسAugust 2021 · 4 days · 31 km away
- 6,376 haEl Tarf الطارف25 August 2026 · 4 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the El Aioun fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2017 to 1 August 2017 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 July 2017 to 1 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 183 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered El Aioun (184 ha, 4.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in El Aioun and came within 2.2 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 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 July 2017 to 1 August 2017. 18 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 2015, 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.