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Miliana fire, July 2020 مليانة · Miliana, Ben Allel

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2020, 13:33 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2020 in Miliana, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,312 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Aïn Defla since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 3 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hammam Righa · 2019Miliana · 2019Messelmoun · 2025El Amra · 2021

Burnt area
2,312ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
17 Jul 2020 – 22 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
17 Jul
2020
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
8MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul22 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2020 · 8 MW · 1

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
50km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 292 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (23 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. Miliana مليانة 44,201 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre where it started
    539 ha reached on 17 Jul
    14 %
  2. Ben Allel بن علال، عين الدفلى 9,068 inhabitants · 6.1 km from the centre
    10 ha
    0.1 %

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 forest66 %
  • Other natural land33 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.5 %
  • Agricultural areas0.5 %

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)
17 Jul 26.3 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Jul 27.2 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
19 Jul 28.8 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul 31.7 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Jul 33.2 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Jul 33.7 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 48
23 Jul after 28.8 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Jul after 28.6 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jul after 33.5 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jul after 35.2 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Jul after 35.7 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
28 Jul after 35.0 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Jul after 35.0 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 42
30 Jul after 36.4 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Jul after 36.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Aug after 35.0 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2020
After · 29 Jul 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 22 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1037 µg/m³
1516171819202122232425
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)

Detections table · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Miliana fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2020 and 22 July 2020: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,312 hectares (23.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Miliana (539 ha, 14 %); Ben Allel (10 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Miliana and came within 1.9 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 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. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.