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Souarekh fire, August 2022 السوارخ · Souarekh, Raml Souk

Out · last measured on 17 Aug 2022

The fire started on 17 August 2022 in Souarekh, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,820 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 9 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.

Compare with…

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

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,820ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 Aug 2022 – 17 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
17 Aug
2022
Danger at start
94
Very extreme · FWI index
Protected area
100%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

44°high
57km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,280 ha in 2017, 22 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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 · 1.6 km from the centre where it started
    997 ha
    12 %
  2. Raml Souk رمل السوق 4,356 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre
    827 ha
    16 %

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 land46 %
  • Agricultural areas0.9 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %

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)
17 Aug 44.0 °C 9 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 94
18 Aug after 29.3 °C 48 % 49 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 39
19 Aug after 27.2 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Aug after 27.6 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Aug after 27.9 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Aug after 27.9 °C 49 % 53 km/h 0.8 mm High 35
23 Aug after 27.7 °C 49 % 50 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 39
24 Aug after 27.9 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
25 Aug after 29.3 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Aug after 31.4 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Aug after 32.0 °C 40 % 34 km/h 3.0 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Aug 2022
After · 24 Aug 2022

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 17 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1062 µg/m³
Optical depth1.14
151617181920
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Souarekh fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 August 2022 and 17 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,820 hectares (18.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Souarekh (997 ha, 12 %); Raml Souk (827 ha, 16 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Souarekh and came within 1.6 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 44.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 94, 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.