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Oued Djemaa fire, June 2019 وادي الجمعة · Oued Djemaa, Derrag

Out · last detection 30 Jun 2019, 01:54 UTC

The fire started on 25 June 2019 in Oued Djemaa, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,006 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Aïn Defla since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 2 in Algeria in 2019, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oued Djemaa · 2016Oued Djemaa · 2026Oued Djemaa · 2016Ouled Hellal · 2020

Burnt area
4,006ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
25 Jun 2019 – 30 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
25 Jun
2019
Heat detections
131
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
232MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jun30 Jun
30 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jun 2019 · 771 MW · 5 26 Jun 2019 · 303 MW · 47 27 Jun 2019 · 114 MW · 24 28 Jun 2019 · 129 MW · 37 29 Jun 2019 · 76 MW · 17 30 Jun 2019 · 1 MW · 1
25 Jun 26 Jun 27 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 30 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
76km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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. Oued Djemaa وادي الجمعة 9,555 inhabitants · 4.9 km from the centre where it started
    3,923 ha reached on 25 Jun
    16 %
  2. Derrag دراق 7,273 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the centre
    88 ha
    0.4 %

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 land59 %
  • Mixed forest31 %
  • Agricultural areas9.0 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.8 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area0.27 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.27 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
25 Jun 39.6 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jun 39.0 °C 10 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
27 Jun 38.3 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Jun 34.5 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Jun 37.1 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Jun 35.8 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jul after 32.9 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Jul after 31.5 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jul after 34.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
4 Jul after 36.1 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jul after 39.9 °C 12 % 55 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 59
6 Jul after 36.5 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
7 Jul after 35.9 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Jul after 35.9 °C 17 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
9 Jul after 30.0 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jul after 31.4 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jul after 32.8 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Jul after 38.4 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
13 Jul after 37.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jul after 32.2 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Jul after 31.7 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jul after 31.6 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul after 35.5 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Jul after 29.9 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul after 34.6 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jun 2019
After · 7 Jul 2019

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 24 June 2019 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak76 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10210 µg/m³
2324252627282930123456789101112
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 · 131Every 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 Oued Djemaa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 June 2019 to 30 June 2019 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 June 2019 to 30 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,006 hectares (40.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Oued Djemaa (3,923 ha, 16 %); Derrag (88 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.7 km of the centre of Derrag, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 June 2019 to 30 June 2019. 131 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.

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.