Skip to content
worldfires
en
DZ · Algeria · →

Nechmaya fire, 8 July 2026 نشامية · Nechmaya, Guelaat Bou Sbaa, Djebala Khemissi

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2026, 01:45 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2026 in Nechmaya, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 906 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Annaba since 2016 (of 50 with a page). Number 61 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nechmaya · 2017Djebala Khemissi · 2026Eulma · 2026Beni Salah · 2021

Burnt area
906ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 16days
8 Jul 2026 – 23 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
4
communes
Started on
8 Jul
2026
Heat detections
59
in a single hotspot: 298 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul23 Jul
20 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jul 2026 · 48 MW · 7 10 Jul 2026 · 270 MW · 10 19 Jul 2026 · 4,819 MW · 40 20 Jul 2026 · 31 MW · 2
9 Jul 10 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
24km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 84 ha in 2017, 15 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 94 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (9.1 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. Nechmaya نشامية 9,964 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre where it started
    465 ha reached on 9 Jul
    3.7 %
  2. Guelaat Bou Sbaa قلعة بوصبع 5,635 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the centre
    296 ha reached on 9 Jul
    8.1 %
  3. Djebala Khemissi جبالة لخميسي 4,487 inhabitants · 7.9 km from the centre
    128 ha reached on 9 Jul
    1.9 %
  4. Belkheir
    19 ha
    0.2 %

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 forest52 %
  • Other natural land42 %
  • Agricultural areas5.5 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.17 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
8 Jul 24.6 °C 29 % 6 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
9 Jul 38.7 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Jul 41.2 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul 43.2 °C 8 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Jul 44.8 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Jul 44.0 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Jul 45.0 °C 7 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Jul 46.0 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
16 Jul 46.5 °C 6 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Jul 47.0 °C 5 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
18 Jul 46.0 °C 6 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Jul 46.0 °C 6 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2026
After · 30 Jul 2026

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 12 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1076 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
6789101112
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 · 59Every 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 Nechmaya fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (8 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (16 days from 8 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 906 hectares (9.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Nechmaya (465 ha, 3.7 %); Guelaat Bou Sbaa (296 ha, 8.1 %); Djebala Khemissi (128 ha, 1.9 %); Belkheir (19 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Nechmaya and came within 2.9 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 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 July 2026 → 23 July 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 59 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.

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.