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El Ancer fire, 7 July 2017 العنصر · El Ancer

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2017, 12:11 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2017 in El Ancer, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 108 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 97th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 162 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

The power measured by the satellite is low (5.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
108ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
7 Jul 2017 – 8 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
7 Jul
2017
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 6 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
30MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8

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
34km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. El Ancer العنصر 20,070 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the town where it started
    109 ha reached on 6 Jul
    1.0 %

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

  • Mixed forest50 %
  • Other natural land48 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.8 %

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)
7 Jul 38.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Jul 33.3 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jul after 32.2 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jul after 34.8 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Jul after 41.8 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jul after 38.4 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul after 36.7 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Jul after 34.2 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul after 32.2 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jul after 30.1 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jul after 31.3 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jul after 34.5 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2017
After · 15 Jul 2017

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 11 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1067 µg/m³
4567891011
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 · 13Every 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 El Ancer fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 7 July 2017 and 8 July 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 108 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered El Ancer (109 ha, 1.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.2 km of El Ancer. 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 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 34 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

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.