El Tarf fire, 27 August 2026 الطارف · Buqus, El Tarf, Zitouna
The fire started on 27 August 2026 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 337 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 57th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 102 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
The power measured by the satellite is low (12.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Buqus · 2021Buqus · 2017El Tarf · 2019El Tarf · 2022
- Burnt area
- 337ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 27 Aug 2026 – 29 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 27 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 14
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 67
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 20MW
- 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 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016, 95 ha in 2017, 67 ha in 2019, 28 ha in 2020, 101 ha in 2021, 56 ha in 2022, 8 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 266 ha that had burned before.
- 101 ha Buqus fire, August 2021 2,697 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 95 ha Buqus fire, July 2017 7,171 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 67 ha El Tarf fire, August 2019 242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 56 ha El Tarf fire, August 2022 212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha El Tarf fire, July 2020 678 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha El Tarf fire, August 2023 597 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha El Tarf fire, July 2016 241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
176 ha reached on 28 Aug0.8 %
-
148 ha reached on 27 Aug1.3 %
-
14 ha0.1 %
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 forest63 %
- Other natural land30 %
- Broadleaved forest6.9 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 16 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Aug | 46.7 °C | 8 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 28 Aug | 33.7 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Aug | 42.5 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 30 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 59 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 53 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 1 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Sept after | 36.2 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Sept after | 31.2 °C | 40 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 293 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 118: 7.9 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 · 14Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس23 July 2017 · 13 days · 5 km away
- 6,376 haEl Tarf الطارف25 August 2026 · 4 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 · 36 km away
- 3,550 haساقية سيدي يوسفJuly 2021 · 5 days · 39 km away
- 3,193 haMedjez Sfa مجاز الصفاءAugust 2022 · 2 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the El Tarf fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 29 August 2026 (3 days from 27 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 337 hectares (3.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Buqus (176 ha, 0.8 %); El Tarf (148 ha, 1.3 %); Zitouna (14 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 5.2 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 46.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 14 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.