El Tarf fire, August 2023 الطارف · El Tarf, Zitouna, Buqus
The fire started on 26 August 2023 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 597 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 36th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 18 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 597ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 26 Aug 2023 – 27 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 28
- in a single hotspot: 306 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 912MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 163 ha in 2016, 234 ha in 2017, 97 ha in 2019, 8 ha in 2021, 7 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 433 ha that had burned before.
- 234 ha El Tarf fire, July 2017 352 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 163 ha El Tarf fire, July 2016 241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 97 ha El Tarf fire, August 2019 242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Buqus fire, August 2021 2,697 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7 ha El Tarf fire, August 2022 212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
472 ha reached on 26 Aug4.2 %
-
123 ha reached on 27 Aug0.8 %
-
2 ha0.0 %
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 forest78 %
- Other natural land20 %
- Broadleaved forest2.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 32.1 °C | 42 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 27 Aug | 38.9 °C | 21 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 28 Aug after | 25.4 °C | 45 % | 56 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 38 |
| 29 Aug after | 26.2 °C | 48 % | 50 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 28 |
| 30 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 48 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Aug after | 26.1 °C | 55 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 50 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 3 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 4 Sept after | 32.6 °C | 42 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Sept after | 26.2 °C | 56 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 49 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 26 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 28Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,376 haEl Tarf الطارف25 August 2026 · 4 days · 4 km away
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس23 July 2017 · 13 days · 6 km away
- 6,415 haBouteldja بوثلجةAugust 2022 · 9 days · 14 km away
- 2,887 haHammam Beni Salah حمام بني صالح15 August 2022 · 4 days · 35 km away
- 3,193 haMedjez Sfa مجاز الصفاءAugust 2022 · 2 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the El Tarf fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 26 August 2023 and 27 August 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 597 hectares (6.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: El Tarf (472 ha, 4.2 %); Zitouna (123 ha, 0.8 %); Buqus (2 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 3.9 km of the centre of Zitouna, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 28 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.
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.