Skip to content
worldfires
DZ · Algeria · →

Oued Taourira fire, 3 August 2016 Oued Taourira

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2016, 13:08 UTC

The fire started on 3 August 2016 in Oued Taourira, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 149 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Sidi Bel Abbes since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 48 in Algeria in 2016, of 62.

Burnt area
149ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
3 Aug 2016 – 3 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
3 Aug
2016
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
225MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Aug3 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

3

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
32km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 11 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Oued Taourira where it started
    150 ha reached on 3 Aug
    0.4 %

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

  • Other natural land75 %
  • Mixed forest19 %
  • Agricultural areas4.7 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.7 %

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)
3 Aug 34.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 3.4 mm Moderate 15
4 Aug after 32.8 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.5 mm High 29
5 Aug after 31.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 29.0 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Aug after 28.2 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug after 28.9 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug after 30.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Aug after 28.6 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Aug after 25.6 °C 49 % 36 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jul 2016
After · 10 Aug 2016

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 4 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1089 µg/m³
123456
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 · 3Every 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 Taourira fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 August 2016 and 3 August 2016: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 149 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Oued Taourira (150 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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.