Oum Toub fire, August 2026 أم الطوب · Oum Toub, Bin El Ouiden, Tamalous
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Oum Toub, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,814 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 19 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,814ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 28 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 153
- in a single hotspot: 150 MW
- Danger at start
- 82
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.3GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 358 ha in 2017, 257 ha in 2020, 441 ha in 2021.
- 441 ha Oum Toub fire, August 2021 1,005 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 358 ha Oum Toub fire, July 2017 477 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 144 ha Bin El Ouiden fire, August 2020 229 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,327 ha reached on 27 Aug19 %
-
275 ha reached on 27 Aug2.6 %
-
220 ha reached on 28 Aug1.2 %
-
0 ha0.0 %
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 forest71 %
- Other natural land27 %
- Agricultural areas1.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 43.8 °C | 11 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 82 |
| 27 Aug | 44.9 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 90 |
| 28 Aug | 37.5 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Aug after | 37.1 °C | 39 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 30 Aug after | 34.9 °C | 45 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 31 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 48 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Sept after | 36.9 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Sept after | 37.2 °C | 23 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Sept after | 35.5 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 4 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Sept after | 33.1 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 280 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 125: 8.3 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 · 153Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,913 haAin Bouziane عين بوزيانJuly 2026 · 2 days · 15 km away
- 3,545 haAin KechraJuly 2026 · 8 days · 16 km away
- 2,709 haKerkera الكركرةJuly 2023 · 6 days · 19 km away
- 2,768 haGrarem Gouga القرارم قوقةJuly 2026 · 97 days · 25 km away
- 2,637 haEl KhroubJuly 2021 · 3 days · 39 km away
- 5,623 haAzzaba عزابةAugust 2026 · 2 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Oum Toub fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 August 2026 (3 days from 26 August 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 3,814 hectares (38.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Oum Toub (3,327 ha, 19 %); Bin El Ouiden (275 ha, 2.6 %); Tamalous (220 ha, 1.2 %); Beni Oulbane (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Oum Toub and came within 2.0 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 44.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 90, 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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- 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. 153 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.
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.