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Roknia fire, 19 July 2026 بلدية الركنية · Roknia, Hammam Debagh

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2026, 12:27 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2026 in Roknia, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 705 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Guelma since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 72 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roknia · 2019Ain Charchar · 2026Eulma · 2026Djebala Khemissi · 2026

Burnt area
705ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 4days
19 Jul 2026 – 22 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
19 Jul
2026
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start
72
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
96MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul22 Jul
22 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 2026 · 257 MW · 22 21 Jul 2026 · 2 MW · 1 22 Jul 2026 · 28 MW · 4
20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul

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
28km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 27 Jul.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 343 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (7.0 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. Roknia بلدية الركنية 9,752 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre where it started
    705 ha reached on 20 Jul
    3.5 %
  2. Hammam Debagh حمام دباغ 16,391 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre
    1 ha
    0.0 %

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 forest53 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Broadleaved forest7.6 %

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)
19 Jul 44.8 °C 6 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
20 Jul 45.0 °C 6 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
21 Jul 45.0 °C 6 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
22 Jul 44.2 °C 7 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
23 Jul after 43.7 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
24 Jul after 40.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
25 Jul after 40.8 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
26 Jul after 37.5 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
27 Jul after 30.2 °C 39 % 49 km/h 1.8 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2026
After · 29 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 22 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 188 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 102: 6.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak188 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10263 µg/m³
Optical depth1.24
171819202122
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 · 27Every 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 Roknia fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (19 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 22 July 2026 (4 days from 19 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 705 hectares (7.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roknia (705 ha, 3.5 %); Hammam Debagh (1 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Roknia and came within 1.7 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 6 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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. 27 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.