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Souarekh fire, July 2017 السوارخ · Souarekh, Raml Souk, El Aioun

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2017, 12:05 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2017 in Souarekh, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,599 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 5 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Souarekh · 2022Al Qala · 2022Bouteldja · 2022Buqus · 2017

Burnt area
2,599ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
31 Jul 2017 – 4 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
31 Jul
2017
Heat detections
152
in a single hotspot: 424 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul4 Aug
4 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

2 Aug 2017 · 357 MW · 52 3 Aug 2017 · 2,057 MW · 62 4 Aug 2017 · 4,671 MW · 38
2 Aug 3 Aug 4 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
46km/h · peak gust
12%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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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. Souarekh السوارخ 8,173 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the centre where it started
    1,370 ha reached on 2 Aug
    16 %
  2. Raml Souk رمل السوق 4,356 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the centre
    1,046 ha reached on 2 Aug
    21 %
  3. El Aioun العيون 5,347 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    187 ha reached on 2 Aug
    4.2 %

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

  • Other natural land61 %
  • Mixed forest38 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.5 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area1.8 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
2 Aug 39.1 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
3 Aug 40.5 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
4 Aug 40.8 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Aug after 36.2 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Aug after 35.2 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Aug after 33.4 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Aug after 39.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug after 37.7 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug after 32.8 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug after 26.7 °C 50 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Aug after 24.6 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
13 Aug after 28.2 °C 46 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Aug after 34.4 °C 36 % 35 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 · 24 Jul 2017
After · 11 Aug 2017

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 4 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 265 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak265 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10367 µg/m³
311234567
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 Souarekh fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2017 to 4 August 2017 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2017 to 4 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,599 hectares (26.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Souarekh (1,370 ha, 16 %); Raml Souk (1,046 ha, 21 %); El Aioun (187 ha, 4.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 0.5 km of the centre of El Aioun, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 August 2017 to 4 August 2017. 152 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.