Iboudraren fire, August 2021 إبودرارن · Ain El Hammam, Beni Yenni, Akbil
The fire started on 9 August 2021 in Iboudraren, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 26,745 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 14 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). The largest in Algeria in 2021, of 92.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 26,745ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 10days
- 9 Aug 2021 – 18 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 14
- communes
- Started on
- 9 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 2,212
- in a single hotspot: 658 MW
- Danger at start
- 61
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 9.0GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 19 Aug.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2020.
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
-
3,844 ha reached on 10 Aug99 %
-
3,453 ha reached on 10 Aug100 %
-
2,821 ha reached on 9 Aug75 %
-
1,414 ha reached on 10 Aug27 %
-
979 ha reached on 10 Aug30 %
-
963 ha reached on 10 Aug61 %
-
820 ha reached on 10 Aug13 %
-
735 ha reached on 10 Aug22 %
-
671 ha reached on 10 Aug40 %
-
587 ha reached on 10 Aug28 %
-
477 ha reached on 10 Aug28 %
-
17 ha reached on 10 Aug0.4 %
-
12 ha reached on 11 Aug0.3 %
-
4 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 forest82 %
- Other natural land14 %
- Artificial surfaces1.8 %
- Agricultural areas0.7 %
- Coniferous forest0.5 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 495 hectares of built-up land and about 79,000 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Feux de forêt de 2021 en Algérie · Incendies de Kabylie · Tizi-Ouzou en feux
- According to the sources, several fires that ended up merging:
- Aïn El Hammam (incl. Iboudraren) 9 August 2021
- Larbâa Nath Irathen / Ouacifs / Ath Yenni 9 August 2021
- Beni Douala 9 August 2021
Sources
- Incendies : Voici le bilan des dégâts enregistrés à Tizi-Ouzou — Observalgérie, 15 August 2021
- Tizi Ouzou en feux et en flammes — Liberté, 11 August 2021
- 2021 Algeria wildfires — Wikipedia (solo pista)
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Aug | 43.4 °C | 8 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 10 Aug | 43.1 °C | 14 % | 64 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 11 Aug | 43.1 °C | 12 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 12 Aug | 43.6 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 13 Aug | 41.5 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Aug | 41.4 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 15 Aug | 41.9 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 16 Aug | 40.8 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Aug | 36.2 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Aug | 34.2 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Aug after | 37.1 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 1.7 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.
Detections table · 2,212Every 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 Iboudraren fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2021 to 18 August 2021 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2021 to 15 August 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 26,745 hectares (267.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 14 municipalities: Ain El Hammam (3,844 ha, 99 %); Beni Yenni (3,453 ha, 100 %); Akbil (2,821 ha, 75 %); Ait Yahia (1,414 ha, 27 %); Iboudraren (979 ha, 30 %); Yatafene (963 ha, 61 %); Mekla (820 ha, 13 %); Ouadhia (735 ha, 22 %); Abi Youcef (671 ha, 40 %); Irdjen (587 ha, 28 %); Ouacif (477 ha, 28 %); Agouni Gueghrane (17 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Ain El Hammam: 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 43.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 64 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 15 August 2021 → 18 August 2021.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 August 2021 to 15 August 2021. 2,212 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 3 confirmed sources.
- 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 2020, 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.