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El Tarf fire, August 2019 الطارف · El Tarf, Buqus

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2019, 13:14 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2019 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 242 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 71th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 44 in Algeria in 2019, of 78.

Burnt area
242ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
1 Aug 2019 – 4 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
1 Aug
2019
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 155 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
101MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug4 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1

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
38km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 60 ha in 2016, 1 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. El Tarf الطارف 25,594 inhabitants · 6.5 km from the town where it started
    240 ha reached on 1 Aug
    2.1 %
  2. Buqus بوقوس 11,234 inhabitants · 6.5 km from the town
    2 ha
    0.0 %

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 forest88 %
  • Other natural land11 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.3 %

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)
1 Aug 37.5 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug 35.4 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Aug 30.2 °C 46 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug 32.0 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Aug after 33.6 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Aug after 36.6 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Aug after 37.5 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 31.6 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Aug after 32.0 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Aug after 33.7 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Aug after 36.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug after 32.7 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug after 29.2 °C 63 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Aug after 26.9 °C 52 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2019
After · 11 Aug 2019

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 2019 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1063 µg/m³
303112345678910
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 · 6Every 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 Tarf fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 August 2019 and 4 August 2019: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 242 hectares (2.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: El Tarf (240 ha, 2.1 %); Buqus (2 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 6.5 km of El Tarf. 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 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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.