Nechmaya fire, 1 August 2019 نشامية · Nechmaya, Ain Berda, Eulma
The fire started on 1 August 2019 in Nechmaya, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,404 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 10th largest in Annaba since 2016 (of 50 with a page). Number 4 in Algeria in 2019, of 78.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,404ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 8days
- 1 Aug 2019 – 8 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 1 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 97
- in a single hotspot: 184 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 664MW
- 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 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 13 Aug.
This area had burned before
6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2017.
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
-
2,269 ha reached on 2 Aug18 %
-
100 ha reached on 7 Aug0.7 %
-
40 ha reached on 8 Aug0.2 %
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 forest44 %
- Other natural land37 %
- Agricultural areas17 %
- Broadleaved forest0.9 %
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 5.1 hectares of built-up land and about 550 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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug | 41.5 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Aug | 36.7 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Aug | 38.2 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Aug | 40.5 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Aug | 42.4 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Aug | 44.1 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 1.3 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 8 Aug | 38.6 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Aug after | 39.0 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 10 Aug after | 39.2 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 11 Aug after | 42.5 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 12 Aug after | 38.8 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Aug after | 33.8 °C | 46 % | 40 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 26 |
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 · 97Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 20,949 haEulma العلمةAugust 2026 · 3 days · 4 km away
- 9,006 haDjebala Khemissi جبالة لخميسيJuly 2026 · 5 days · 15 km away
- 14,609 haAin Charchar عين شرشار17 July 2026 · 6 days · 25 km away
- 4,207 haBen Azouz بن عزوزJuly 2026 · 3 days · 28 km away
- 11,190 haOued El AnebJuly 2026 · 8 days · 35 km away
- 5,857 haBeni Salah BoucheghoufAugust 2021 · 4 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Nechmaya fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 August 2019 to 8 August 2019 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2019 to 7 August 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,404 hectares (24.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Nechmaya (2,269 ha, 18 %); Ain Berda (100 ha, 0.7 %); Eulma (40 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Nechmaya and came within 1.5 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 44.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 7 August 2019 → 8 August 2019.
- Start date: 2 August 2019 → 1 August 2019.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 August 2019 to 7 August 2019. 97 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 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.