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Oued Taourira fire, July 2017 Oued Taourira

Out · last measured on 11 Jul 2017

The fire started on 11 July 2017 in Oued Taourira, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 133 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Sidi Bel Abbes since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 139 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tafissour · 2016Moulay Larbi · 2026Youb · 2017Bir El Hammam · 2016

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
133ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
11 Jul 2017 – 11 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
11 Jul
2017
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
47km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 15 Jul.

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
    133 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 land79 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %
  • Mixed forest9.2 %

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)
11 Jul 37.6 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
12 Jul after 39.0 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Jul after 38.4 °C 10 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Jul after 38.4 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Jul after 33.9 °C 19 % 33 km/h 1.8 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jul 2017
After · 18 Jul 2017

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 11 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1048 µg/m³
91011121314
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 Taourira fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 11 July 2017 and 11 July 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 133 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Oued Taourira (133 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 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.