How long did the Ouled Hellal fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 29 June 2020 and 29 June 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 150 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouled Hellal (150 ha, 0.7 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.3 km of Ouled Hellal. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2020-06-29 → 2020-06-29

Ouled Hellal fire, June 2020 أولاد هلال · Ouled Hellal

Out · last detection 29 Jun 2020, 12:30 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2020 in Ouled Hellal, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 150 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 43th largest in Médéa since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 172 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 150ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 29 Jun 2020 – 29 Jun 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 29 Jun; 2020
Heat detections: 7; in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 101MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun29 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

32km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2017.

2 ha Ouled Hellal fire, July 2017 132 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Ouled Hellal أولاد هلال 3,367 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the town where it started

150 ha reached on 29 Jun

0.7 %

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 land76 %
Mixed forest21 %
Broadleaved forest2.6 %

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)
29 Jun	37.1 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 39
30 Jun after	39.2 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 46
1 Jul after	37.3 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Jul after	38.6 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
3 Jul after	34.2 °C	19 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
4 Jul after	32.3 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Jul after	32.0 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Jul after	30.7 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Jul after	34.8 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 Jul after	36.8 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
9 Jul after	38.1 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jun 2020

After · 6 Jul 2020

Before After

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 1 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1053 µg/m³

WHO 15

2728293012

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 · 7Every 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

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouled Hellal fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 29 June 2020 and 29 June 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 150 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouled Hellal (150 ha, 0.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.3 km of Ouled Hellal. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned