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Oued Djemaa fire, August 2020 وادي الجمعة · Oued Djemaa, Derrag, Ouled Hellal

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2020, 12:43 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2020 in Oued Djemaa, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,286 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Aïn Defla since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 10 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oued Djemaa · 2019Oued Djemaa · 2019Oued Djemaa · 2026Oued Djemaa · 2016

Burnt area
1,286ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
6 Aug 2020 – 10 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
6 Aug
2020
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
225MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug10 Aug
10 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 2020 · 390 MW · 19 7 Aug 2020 · 326 MW · 12 8 Aug 2020 · 215 MW · 14 9 Aug 2020 · 49 MW · 5 10 Aug 2020 · 144 MW · 10
6 Aug 7 Aug 8 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
51km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 364 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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 · 13.6 km from the centre where it started
    1,043 ha reached on 6 Aug
    4.2 %
  2. Derrag دراق 7,273 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre
    217 ha reached on 8 Aug
    1.0 %
  3. Ouled Hellal أولاد هلال 3,367 inhabitants · 8.5 km from the centre
    27 ha reached on 7 Aug
    0.1 %

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 land58 %
  • Mixed forest37 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.7 %
  • Agricultural areas2.6 %

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)
6 Aug 30.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Aug 31.1 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Aug 31.6 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Aug 31.9 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Aug 32.8 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Aug after 33.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Aug after 33.4 °C 16 % 45 km/h 1.7 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2020
After · 17 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 8 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 80 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak80 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1086 µg/m³
45678910111213
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 · 60Every 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 6 August 2020 to 10 August 2020 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 August 2020 to 8 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,286 hectares (12.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Oued Djemaa (1,043 ha, 4.2 %); Derrag (217 ha, 1.0 %); Ouled Hellal (27 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.3 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 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 August 2020 to 8 August 2020. 60 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.