Ifigha fire, July 2024 إيفيغاء · Ifigha, Bouzguen, Iloula Oumalou
The fire started on 21 July 2024 in Ifigha, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 926 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 10th largest in Tizi Ouzou since 2016 (of 46 with a page). The largest in Algeria in 2024, of 14.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 926ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 21 Jul 2024 – 22 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 14
- in a single hotspot: 93 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 461MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
21 Jul 2024 · 461 MW · 14
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 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 26 Jul.
This area had burned before
60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 542 ha in 2021, 29 ha in 2023.
- 362 ha Iloula Oumalou fire, August 2021 6,262 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 180 ha Azazga fire, August 2021 3,611 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12 ha Ifigha fire, August 2023 173 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
-
563 ha reached on 21 Jul12 %
-
365 ha5.3 %
-
0 ha0.0 %
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 land46 %
- Agricultural areas2.8 %
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 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 40.8 °C | 19 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Jul | 32.6 °C | 37 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Jul after | 33.4 °C | 30 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 24 Jul after | 36.9 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 25 Jul after | 39.2 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 26 Jul after | 39.1 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 33 |
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 21 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 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
- 6,262 haIloula Oumalou إيلولة أمالوAugust 2021 · 9 days · 5 km away
- 3,611 haAzazga عزازقةAugust 2021 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 26,745 haIboudraren إبودرارنAugust 2021 · 10 days · 19 km away
- 7,342 haZekri زكريAugust 2021 · 6 days · 24 km away
- 3,656 haBeni Zmenzer بني زمنزرAugust 2021 · 6 days · 32 km away
- 3,720 haBeni Djellil بني جليلJuly 2023 · 6 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ifigha fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 July 2024 and 22 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 926 hectares (9.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ifigha (563 ha, 12 %); Bouzguen (365 ha, 5.3 %); Iloula Oumalou (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ifigha 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 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 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.