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Oum Toub fire, July 2026 أم الطوب · Oum Toub, Sidi Mezghiche

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2026, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2026 in Oum Toub, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,877 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 39 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oum Toub · 2021Oum Toub · 2026Ain Bouziane · 2026Ain Kechra · 2026

Burnt area
1,877ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 2days
16 Jul 2026 – 17 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
16 Jul
2026
Heat detections
47
in a single hotspot: 221 MW
Danger at start
70
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul17 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2026 · 3,468 MW · 47

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

The weather it burned in

45°high
44km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 94 ha in 2021, 5 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Oum Toub أم الطوب 34,458 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre where it started
    1,644 ha reached on 17 Jul
    9.2 %
  2. Sidi Mezghiche سيدي مزغيش 25,593 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre
    236 ha
    2.5 %

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 forest75 %
  • Other natural land22 %
  • Agricultural areas2.4 %

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)
16 Jul 44.8 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very extreme 70
17 Jul 43.9 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
18 Jul after 43.6 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
19 Jul after 44.5 °C 7 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
20 Jul after 44.6 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
21 Jul after 44.1 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
22 Jul after 43.1 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
23 Jul after 42.1 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Jul after 40.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Jul after 38.3 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Jul after 34.8 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2026
After · 24 Jul 2026

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 19 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1051 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
141516171819
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 · 47Every 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?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 17 July 2026 (2 days from 16 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,877 hectares (18.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Oum Toub (1,644 ha, 9.2 %); Sidi Mezghiche (236 ha, 2.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Oum Toub and came within 2.9 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 44.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very 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.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 47 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.