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El Hamma fire, July 2026 الحامة · El Hamma, Khenchela

Out · last measured on 13 Jul 2026

The fire started on 13 July 2026 in El Hamma, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 210 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 135 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Burnt area
210ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
13 Jul 2026 – 13 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
13 Jul
2026
Heat detections
17
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul13 Jul

The weather it burned in

38°high
21km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 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 Hamma الحامة 12,051 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the town where it started
    108 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.6 %
  2. Khenchela خنشلة 108,580 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the town
    102 ha reached on 17 Aug
    3.2 %

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 land62 %
  • Mixed forest31 %
  • Agricultural areas6.3 %

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)
13 Jul 38.0 °C 7 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul after 38.2 °C 8 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jul after 38.8 °C 8 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jul after 39.2 °C 7 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Jul after 38.8 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
18 Jul after 38.2 °C 8 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Jul after 38.8 °C 7 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Jul after 39.0 °C 7 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
21 Jul after 38.2 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 89
22 Jul after 39.0 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
23 Jul after 39.7 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jul 2026
After · 20 Jul 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 16 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
111213141516
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 · 17Every 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 Hamma fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 13 July 2026 and 13 July 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 210 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: El Hamma (108 ha, 0.6 %); Khenchela (102 ha, 3.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.5 km of El Hamma. 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 7 % and gusts hit 21 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.