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El Hadaik fire, August 2021 الحدائق · El Hadaik, Bouchtata

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2021, 13:21 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2021 in El Hadaik, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 929 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 19th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 22 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bouchtata · 2019Azzaba · 2026Oum Toub · 2026Kerkera · 2023

Burnt area
929ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
10 Aug 2021 – 12 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
10 Aug
2021
Heat detections
42
in a single hotspot: 515 MW
Danger at start
77
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug12 Aug
11 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2021 · 3,150 MW · 31 11 Aug 2021 · 161 MW · 11
10 Aug 11 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

48°high
52km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 68 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (9.3 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. El Hadaik الحدائق 18,002 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre where it started
    540 ha reached on 10 Aug
    10 %
  2. Bouchtata بوشطاطة 9,219 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre
    391 ha reached on 10 Aug
    3.4 %

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 forest81 %
  • Other natural land17 %
  • Agricultural areas1.9 %

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)
10 Aug 47.7 °C 6 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
11 Aug 45.4 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
12 Aug 44.6 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
13 Aug after 40.4 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
14 Aug after 38.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Aug after 39.8 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Aug after 40.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Aug after 31.1 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Aug after 29.9 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Aug after 32.8 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Aug after 32.5 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Aug after 33.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Aug after 36.5 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2021
After · 19 Aug 2021

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 10 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak98 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10238 µg/m³
89101112131415
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 · 42Every 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 Hadaik fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2021 and 12 August 2021: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 929 hectares (9.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: El Hadaik (540 ha, 10 %); Bouchtata (391 ha, 3.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in El Hadaik and came within 1.2 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 47.7 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, 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.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 42 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.

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.