Merad fire, August 2020 مَراد · Merad, Hammam Righa
The fire started on 9 August 2020 in Merad, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 259 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 26th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 112 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
- Burnt area
- 259ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 9 Aug 2020 – 11 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 9 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 20
- in a single hotspot: 60 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 334MW
- 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 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2017.
What happened to each town
-
141 ha reached on 8 Aug1.1 %
-
119 ha reached on 10 Aug1.5 %
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 forest98 %
- Broadleaved forest1.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Aug | 29.4 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Aug | 31.0 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Aug | 31.9 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 39 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 56 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 14 Aug after | 28.7 °C | 52 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 15 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 64 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Aug after | 26.8 °C | 46 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 19 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 45 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 52 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 21 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 60 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 20Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,312 haMiliana مليانةJuly 2020 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 1,248 haTipaza تيبازةAugust 2022 · 5 days · 21 km away
- 1,209 haMesselmoun25 July 2020 · 5 days · 26 km away
- 2,102 haMesselmounNovember 2025 · 2 days · 28 km away
- 1,368 haGouraya قورايةNovember 2020 · 1 day · 38 km away
- 3,363 haEl Amra العامرةAugust 2021 · 5 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Merad fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 9 August 2020 and 11 August 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 259 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Merad (141 ha, 1.1 %); Hammam Righa (119 ha, 1.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 9.2 km of Hammam Righa. 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 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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
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.