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Oum Toub fire, July 2017 أم الطوب · Oum Toub, Bin El Ouiden

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2017, 11:21 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2017 in Oum Toub, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 477 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 38 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oum Toub · 2026Ain Kechra · 2026Kerkera · 2023Ain Bouziane · 2026

Burnt area
477ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 Jul 2017 – 1 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
31 Jul
2017
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 433 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 2017 · 2,460 MW · 13 1 Aug 2017 · 4 MW · 1
31 Jul 1 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
33km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 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. Oum Toub أم الطوب 34,458 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the centre where it started
    468 ha reached on 31 Jul
    2.6 %
  2. Bin El Ouiden بين الويدان 21,629 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre
    10 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.1 %

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 land62 %
  • Mixed forest36 %
  • Agricultural areas1.3 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
31 Jul 42.0 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
1 Aug 41.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug after 38.9 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Aug after 40.6 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 37.4 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug after 37.6 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Aug after 37.2 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
7 Aug after 35.0 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Aug after 43.0 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 46
9 Aug after 36.6 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
10 Aug after 29.3 °C 65 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
11 Aug after 29.4 °C 51 % 45 km/h 8.1 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2017
After · 8 Aug 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 1 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10105 µg/m³
2930311234
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 · 14Every 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 Oum Toub fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2017 and 1 August 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 477 hectares (4.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Oum Toub (468 ha, 2.6 %); Bin El Ouiden (10 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.6 km of the centre of Bin El Ouiden, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

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. 14 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.