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Oudjana fire, August 2020 وجانة · Oudjana, Chahna

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2020, 12:05 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2020 in Oudjana, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 510 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 16th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 47 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
510ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
11 Aug 2020 – 14 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
11 Aug
2020
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
377MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug14 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1112

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
41km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Oudjana وجانة 9,580 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the town where it started
    407 ha reached on 11 Aug
    6.7 %
  2. Chahna بلدية الشحنة 8,781 inhabitants · 4.6 km from the town
    104 ha reached on 12 Aug
    1.2 %

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 forest79 %
  • Other natural land21 %

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)
11 Aug 33.6 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Aug 32.9 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Aug 31.2 °C 39 % 41 km/h 1.1 mm High 22
14 Aug 31.0 °C 42 % 34 km/h 1.3 mm High 21
15 Aug after 32.5 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Aug after 29.0 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Aug after 28.6 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Aug after 29.7 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Aug after 32.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Aug after 37.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Aug after 33.2 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Aug after 31.2 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug after 28.7 °C 59 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Aug after 28.2 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2020
After · 21 Aug 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 20 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1070 µg/m³
91011121314151617181920212223
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 · 35Every 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 Oudjana fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 11 August 2020 and 14 August 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 510 hectares (5.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Oudjana (407 ha, 6.7 %); Chahna (104 ha, 1.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.9 km of Oudjana. 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 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

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
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.

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.