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Seraidi fire, August 2021 وادي العنب · Seraidi, Oued El Aneb

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2021, 01:04 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2021 in Seraidi, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,718 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Annaba since 2016 (of 50 with a page). Number 9 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

Burnt area
3,718ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
11 Aug 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
11 Aug
2021
Heat detections
152
in a single hotspot: 330 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
8.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Aug 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug14 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

11121314

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
56km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 102 ha in 2017, 7 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Seraidi وادي العنب 21,088 inhabitants · 7.0 km from the town where it started
    3,207 ha reached on 11 Aug
    24 %
  2. Oued El Aneb
    517 ha reached on 12 Aug
    2.7 %

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

  • Mixed forest94 %
  • Other natural land3.5 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.9 %

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)
11 Aug 42.2 °C 10 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
12 Aug 43.2 °C 7 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Aug 39.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Aug 34.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Aug after 35.4 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Aug after 37.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Aug after 29.3 °C 55 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Aug after 28.2 °C 49 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Aug after 28.8 °C 48 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Aug after 30.3 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Aug after 31.8 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Aug after 33.2 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Aug after 33.0 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Aug after 30.7 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2021
After · 21 Aug 2021

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 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 109 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 53: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak109 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10197 µg/m³
91011121314151617
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 · 152Every 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 Seraidi fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 11 August 2021 and 14 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,718 hectares (37.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Seraidi (3,207 ha, 24 %); Oued El Aneb (517 ha, 2.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.0 km of Seraidi. 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 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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
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.

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.