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Sigus fire, September 2020 سيقوس · Sigus

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2020, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 28 September 2020 in Sigus, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 352 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 19th largest in Constantine since 2016 (of 31 with a page). Number 89 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
352ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
28 Sept 2020 – 29 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
28 Sept
2020
Heat detections
17
in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
868MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Sept29 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

28

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
32km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Sigus سيقوس 17,598 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the town where it started
    353 ha reached on 28 Sept
    1.7 %

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 forest71 %
  • Other natural land21 %
  • Broadleaved forest7.2 %

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)
28 Sept 22.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Sept 27.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Sept after 28.9 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Oct after 26.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Oct after 27.4 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Oct after 23.9 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Oct after 26.6 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct after 18.8 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Oct after 19.6 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Oct after 23.1 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Oct after 23.0 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Oct after 26.5 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Sept 2020
After · 6 Oct 2020

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 3 October 2020 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
262728293012345
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 · 17Every 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 Sigus fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 September 2020 and 29 September 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 352 hectares (3.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sigus (353 ha, 1.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.8 km of Sigus. 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 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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

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.