How long did the El Harrouch fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2020 and 3 August 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 490 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered El Harrouch (491 ha, 4.8 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.9 km of El Harrouch. 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 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2020-07-31 → 2020-08-03

El Harrouch fire, July 2020 الحروش · El Harrouch

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2020, 12:11 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2020 in El Harrouch, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 490 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 49 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area: 490ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 4days; 31 Jul 2020 – 3 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 31 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 24; in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 870MW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Aug 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul3 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

311

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

42km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 13 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

El Harrouch الحروش 48,994 inhabitants · 5.9 km from the town where it started

491 ha reached on 31 Jul

4.8 %

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 forest53 %
Other natural land47 %

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)
31 Jul	38.3 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
1 Aug	36.6 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Aug	38.1 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Aug	34.0 °C	34 %	42 km/h	2.8 mm	Moderate 16
4 Aug after	27.5 °C	52 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 21
5 Aug after	28.4 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Aug after	29.4 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Aug after	29.7 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Aug after	30.4 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Aug after	31.5 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Aug after	33.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Aug after	36.6 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
12 Aug after	36.9 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
13 Aug after	38.9 °C	21 %	36 km/h	1.6 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Jul 2020

After · 10 Aug 2020

Before After

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 2 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1045 µg/m³

WHO 15

2930311234567891011121314

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 · 24Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the El Harrouch fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2020 and 3 August 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 490 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered El Harrouch (491 ha, 4.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.9 km of El Harrouch. 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 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned