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Oued Cheham fire, August 2025 وادي الشحم · Oued Cheham

Out · last measured on 30 Aug 2025

The fire started on 30 August 2025 in Oued Cheham, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 103 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Souk Ahras since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 32 in Algeria in 2025, of 35.

Compare with…

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We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.

Burnt area
103ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
30 Aug 2025 – 30 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
30 Aug
2025
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

27°high
35km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 6 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2023.

What happened to each town

  1. Oued Cheham وادي الشحم 14,043 inhabitants · 7.0 km from the centre where it started
    103 ha
    1.1 %

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

  • Other natural land76 %
  • Mixed forest24 %

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)
30 Aug 27.3 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug after 32.5 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Sept after 35.7 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 45
2 Sept after 25.6 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
3 Sept after 29.4 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Sept after 32.9 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
5 Sept after 30.9 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept after 32.1 °C 31 % 42 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2025
After · 6 Sept 2025

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 28 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1090 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
2829303112
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Oued Cheham fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 August 2025 and 30 August 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 103 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Oued Cheham (103 ha, 1.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Oued Cheham and came within 7.0 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 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 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. No 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.

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.