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Gouraya fire, November 2020 قوراية · Gouraya

Out · last measured on 6 Nov 2020

The fire started on 6 November 2020 in Gouraya, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,368 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 9 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

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We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,368ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
6 Nov 2020 – 6 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
6 Nov
2020
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

29°high
87km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 7 Nov.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Gouraya قوراية 20,144 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    1,371 ha
    16 %

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 forest68 %
  • Other natural land28 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.4 %
  • Agricultural areas0.9 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.6 %

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)
6 Nov 28.6 °C 24 % 87 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Nov after 26.3 °C 25 % 86 km/h 1.1 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Oct 2020
After · 13 Nov 2020

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 7 November 2020 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1097 µg/m³
456789
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gouraya fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 November 2020 and 6 November 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,368 hectares (13.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gouraya (1,371 ha, 16 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Gouraya and reached its centre: 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 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 87 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.