Guertoufa fire, July 2020 تاقدمت · Tiaret, Guertoufa, Tagdemt
The fire started on 26 July 2020 in Guertoufa, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 834 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
Number 27 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
- Burnt area
- 834ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 26 Jul 2020 – 28 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 26 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 36
- in a single hotspot: 63 MW
- Danger at start
- 61
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.1GW
- sum of detected power
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
416 ha reached on 27 Jul3.4 %
-
353 ha reached on 27 Jul2.0 %
-
67 ha reached on 27 Jul0.4 %
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 forest55 %
- Other natural land43 %
- Broadleaved forest1.4 %
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 Jul | 38.4 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 27 Jul | 38.5 °C | 7 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 28 Jul | 37.5 °C | 10 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 29 Jul after | 37.3 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 30 Jul after | 37.7 °C | 11 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 31 Jul after | 37.7 °C | 8 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 1 Aug after | 37.2 °C | 12 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 2 Aug after | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 3 Aug after | 33.7 °C | 11 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 24 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 5 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Aug after | 35.3 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Aug after | 35.2 °C | 6 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
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 28 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 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 · 36Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guertoufa fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 26 July 2020 and 28 July 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 834 hectares (8.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Tiaret (416 ha, 3.4 %); Guertoufa (353 ha, 2.0 %); Tagdemt (67 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.2 km of Tiaret. 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 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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
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
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.