Ouled Hbaba fire, 29 July 2020 أولاد أحبابة · Ibn Badis, Ouled Hbaba
The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Ouled Hbaba, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 392 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 37th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 75 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 392ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 29 Jul 2020 – 29 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 6
- in a single hotspot: 50 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 145MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
29 Jul 2020 · 145 MW · 6
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 3 Aug.
This area had burned before
39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 73 ha in 2016, 86 ha in 2017.
- 77 ha Ibn Badis fire, July 2017 526 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 73 ha Ibn Badis fire, August 2016 136 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9 ha Ouled Hbaba fire, July 2017 403 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
205 ha0.6 %
-
188 ha reached on 29 Jul1.0 %
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
- Mixed forest74 %
- Other natural land19 %
- Agricultural areas4.3 %
- Broadleaved forest1.8 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside 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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul | 34.9 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 30 Jul after | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 31 Jul after | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Aug after | 35.9 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 2.8 mm | Moderate 15 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 6Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,593 haIbn Badis ابن باديسAugust 2022 · 2 days · 6 km away
- 6,045 haIbn Badis ابن باديسJuly 2026 · 2 days · 9 km away
- 3,913 haAin Bouziane عين بوزيانJuly 2026 · 2 days · 22 km away
- 14,609 haAin Charchar عين شرشار17 July 2026 · 6 days · 37 km away
- 3,814 haOum Toub أم الطوبAugust 2026 · 3 days · 37 km away
- 5,623 haAzzaba عزابةAugust 2026 · 2 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ouled Hbaba fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2020 and 29 July 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 392 hectares (3.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ibn Badis (205 ha, 0.6 %); Ouled Hbaba (188 ha, 1.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ouled Hbaba and came within 9.2 km of its centre. 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 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
- 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.
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. 6 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.