Eraguene fire, August 2026 إيراقن سويسي · Selma Ben Ziada, Eraguene, Serdj El Ghoul
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Eraguene, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,957 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 17 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,957ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 4days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 29 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 140
- in a single hotspot: 60 MW
- Danger at start
- 85
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 395MW
- 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 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 72 ha in 2017, 401 ha in 2020, 6 ha in 2021, 131 ha in 2023, 1 ha in 2024.
- 274 ha Selma Ben Ziada fire, August 2020 371 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 65 ha Selma Ben Ziada fire, October 2023 135 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Selma Ben Ziada fire, September 2021 116 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Selma Ben Ziada fire, October 2023 246 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
-
2,657 ha reached on 28 Aug22 %
-
1,295 ha reached on 26 Aug9.5 %
-
12 ha reached on 27 Aug0.1 %
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 forest51 %
- Other natural land47 %
- Agricultural areas1.3 %
- Coniferous forest0.5 %
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 were about 8.2 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 44.7 °C | 9 % | 83 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 85 |
| 27 Aug | 46.0 °C | 7 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 28 Aug | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Aug | 31.5 °C | 44 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 62 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 31 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 65 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 1 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 2 Sept after | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Sept after | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Sept after | 30.7 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Sept after | 30.1 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
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 29 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 828 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 287: 19 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 · 140Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,144 haTexenna تاكسنةAugust 2026 · 3 days · 18 km away
- 3,042 haMelbou ملبوJuly 2023 · 3 days · 19 km away
- 2,250 haEl Ayadi Barbes العياضي برباس21 July 2026 · 3 days · 23 km away
- 18,731 haDarguina درقينة19 August 2026 · 13 days · 28 km away
- 48,071 haChekfa الشقفةAugust 2026 · 20 days · 39 km away
- 1,892 haChekfa الشقفةAugust 2021 · 7 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Eraguene fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 29 August 2026 (4 days from 26 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 3,957 hectares (39.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Selma Ben Ziada (2,657 ha, 22 %); Eraguene (1,295 ha, 9.5 %); Serdj El Ghoul (12 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Selma Ben Ziada: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 44.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 83 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 85, class Very 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. 140 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.