Ouled Hellal fire, 6 August 2020 أولاد هلال · Ouled Hellal, Oued Djemaa, Birbouche
The fire started on 6 August 2020 in Ouled Hellal, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 5,482 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Médéa since 2016 (of 55 with a page). The largest in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
- Burnt area
- 5,482ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 6 Aug 2020 – 11 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 6 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 251
- in a single hotspot: 176 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 7.1GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
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
It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 826 ha in 2016, 769 ha in 2017, 6 ha in 2019.
- 822 ha Oued Djemaa fire, July 2016 1,446 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 580 ha Ouled Hellal fire, July 2017 682 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 188 ha Ouled Hellal fire, July 2017 2,591 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Wadi Ash Shurfaa fire, July 2019 269 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Ouled Hellal fire, August 2016 168 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
3,537 ha reached on 6 Aug17 %
-
1,467 ha reached on 7 Aug5.9 %
-
355 ha reached on 8 Aug4.8 %
-
136 ha1.0 %
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 land48 %
- Mixed forest46 %
- Broadleaved forest4.2 %
- Agricultural areas1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Aug | 32.2 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Aug | 33.0 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Aug | 35.2 °C | 12 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Aug | 36.2 °C | 12 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 10 Aug | 37.5 °C | 11 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 11 Aug | 38.0 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 12 Aug after | 35.4 °C | 21 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 13 Aug after | 38.2 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Aug after | 36.6 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Aug after | 37.6 °C | 18 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 16 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 17 Aug after | 34.3 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 18 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 19 Aug after | 36.5 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 20 Aug after | 39.7 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 21 Aug after | 39.2 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 22 Aug after | 37.5 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 24 Aug after | 33.4 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 251Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,014 haOuled Hellal أولاد هلال7 July 2020 · 6 days · 6 km away
- 1,446 haOued Djemaa وادي الجمعة21 July 2016 · 2 days · 6 km away
- 2,591 haOuled Hellal أولاد هلال11 July 2017 · 5 days · 9 km away
- 2,201 haOued Djemaa وادي الجمعةJuly 2026 · 1 day · 12 km away
- 2,886 haOuled AntarJuly 2017 · 5 days · 14 km away
- 4,006 haOued Djemaa وادي الجمعةJune 2019 · 5 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ouled Hellal fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 6 August 2020 and 11 August 2020: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 5,482 hectares (54.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Ouled Hellal (3,537 ha, 17 %); Oued Djemaa (1,467 ha, 5.9 %); Birbouche (355 ha, 4.8 %); Ain Lechiakh (136 ha, 1.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.8 km of Birbouche. 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 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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
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
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.