Burned area
satellite only561ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 26 January 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
DZ · Algeria · –
Oued El Aneb fire, August 2021 Oued El Aneb, Seraidi
Out · last detection 14 Aug 2021, 01:04 UTC
The fire started on 10 August 2021 in Oued El Aneb, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 561 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 16th largest in Annaba since 2016 (of 50 with a page). Number 36 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
10 Aug 2021 to 14 Aug 2021: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 14 Aug 2021, 01:04 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only10 Aug 2021
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 10 Aug 2021
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only30
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 67 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 10 Aug 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only858MW
Total radiative power on 11 August 2021; hotspots that day: 20.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 11 Aug 2021
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model56.7FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 10 Aug 2021, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model44.8°C · 12% RH
High of 44.8 °C and minimum humidity of 12% on 10 August 2021; gusts of 46 km/h on 11 August 2021.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 10 Aug 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 561 ha
- Dates
- 10 Aug 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
- Name
- Oued El Aneb
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/oued-el-aneb-2021-08?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire oued-el-aneb-2021-08.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-08-10 | 0 | 0 | 44.8 | 26.5 | 12 | 13.7 | 40.7 | 0 | 56.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2021-08-11 | 20 | 858 | 43.5 | 24.5 | 9 | 13.7 | 45.7 | 0 | 59 | extremo | 1 |
| 2021-08-12 | 4 | 83 | 41.7 | 22.7 | 15 | 13.3 | 35.3 | 0 | 58.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2021-08-13 | 4 | 22 | 39.2 | 23.2 | 21 | 11.7 | 32.8 | 0 | 49.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-08-14 | 2 | 3 | 35.5 | 22 | 31 | 12.2 | 32.8 | 0 | 40.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-08-15 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 20.7 | 26 | 12.9 | 33.1 | 0 | 41.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-16 | 0 | 0 | 39.3 | 22.4 | 18 | 15 | 37.4 | 0 | 48.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-17 | 0 | 0 | 31.7 | 22.6 | 47 | 16.3 | 41.4 | 0 | 33.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-18 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 21 | 44 | 14.8 | 38.9 | 0 | 30.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-19 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 19.5 | 41 | 15.8 | 42.5 | 0 | 31.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-20 | 0 | 0 | 31.9 | 21 | 42 | 13.4 | 35.6 | 0 | 30 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-21 | 0 | 0 | 33.2 | 20.1 | 31 | 14.6 | 38.2 | 0 | 34.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-22 | 0 | 0 | 33.9 | 18.1 | 26 | 12.3 | 36 | 0 | 36.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-23 | 0 | 0 | 35.8 | 18.9 | 19 | 16.8 | 41 | 0 | 47.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-08-24 | 0 | 0 | 31.8 | 21.9 | 41 | 15.8 | 37.4 | 0 | 35.8 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 561ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 10 Aug 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 30
- in a single hotspot: 67 MW
- Danger at start
- 57
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 242MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
10 Aug14 Aug
14 Aug 2021
How it evolved, day by day
11 Aug
12 Aug
13 Aug
14 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
45°high
46km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 531 ha in 2017, 35 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 532 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Oued El Aneb where it started548 ha reached on 11 Aug2.9 %
-
13 ha reached on 12 Aug0.1 %
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 land71 %
- Mixed forest29 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
Started with Very dry air: 40 % of the area in Algeria 60 days without rain: 14 % of the area in Algeria
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Aug | 44.8 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 11 Aug | 43.5 °C | 9 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 12 Aug | 41.7 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 13 Aug | 39.2 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 14 Aug | 35.5 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Aug after | 37.0 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Aug after | 39.3 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Aug after | 31.7 °C | 47 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 44 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 22 Aug after | 33.9 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Aug after | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 56.7, a minimum humidity of 12% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 35.
FWI at the start
56.7
Minimum humidity
12 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Oued El Aneb fire, August 2021
561 ha
5 days
FWI 56.7
Min. humidity 12 %
Es Sebt fire, August 2019
1,027 ha
6 days
FWI 56.2
Min. humidity 14 %
59 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 13 Aug.
Bouchtata fire, August 2019
900 ha
2 days
FWI 61.5
Min. humidity 12 %
74 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 13 Aug.
ساقية سيدي يوسف fire, July 2021
3,550 ha
5 days
FWI 55.6
Min. humidity 11 %
92 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 30 Jul.
Awlad Mu'min fire, July 2021
774 ha
3 days
FWI 56.9
Min. humidity 9 %
86 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Bouati Mahmoud fire, August 2019
415 ha
2 days
FWI 48.7
Min. humidity 13 %
33 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 2 days
- median duration
- 319 ha
- median area
- 17 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.2 mm
- rain at the end (median; 9 of 35 had it)
It was 1.8 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 5 days, against 2 days.
Only 12 of its 35 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 26 of 35, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.2 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
46km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 14 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 9 of 35, with a median of 1.2 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 3 Aug 2021
After · 21 Aug 2021
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10287 µg/m³
WHO 15
8 Aug10 Aug12 Aug14 Aug16 Aug
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 · 30Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,108 haOued El AnebJuly 2017 · 8 days · 1 km away
- 11,190 haOued El AnebJuly 2026 · 8 days · 7 km away
- 3,718 haSeraidi وادي العنبAugust 2021 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 3,917 haBerrahal برحالAugust 2020 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 20,949 haEulma العلمةAugust 2026 · 3 days · 28 km away
- 4,207 haBen Azouz بن عزوزJuly 2026 · 3 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Oued El Aneb fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2021 and 14 August 2021: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 561 hectares (5.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Oued El Aneb (548 ha, 2.9 %); Seraidi (13 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 13.5 km of the centre of Seraidi, 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 44.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 35. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 319 ha; 17 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 12 of its 35 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 26 of 35, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.2 mm.
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 30 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.
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.