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Souhane fire, September 2023 صوحان · Souhane, Larbaa

Out · last measured on 4 Sept 2023

The fire started on 4 September 2023 in Souhane, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 523 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Blida since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 21 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Souhane · 2023Deux Bassins · 2021Bouinan · 2026Baata · 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
523ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
4 Sept 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
4 Sept
2023
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
63km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 12 Sept.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.2 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. Souhane صوحان 260 inhabitants · 3.0 km from the centre where it started
    373 ha
    5.2 %
  2. Larbaa الأربعاء 83,819 inhabitants · 3.9 km from the centre
    151 ha
    1.8 %

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 forest71 %
  • Other natural land27 %
  • Agricultural areas2.3 %

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)
4 Sept 38.3 °C 19 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Sept after 30.4 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Sept after 28.4 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Sept after 27.9 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Sept after 28.2 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Sept after 31.4 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Sept after 34.1 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Sept after 30.6 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
12 Sept after 29.8 °C 50 % 36 km/h 2.5 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2023
After · 11 Sept 2023

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 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 204 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak204 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10628 µg/m³
Optical depth0.66
234567
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 Souhane fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 4 September 2023 and 4 September 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 523 hectares (5.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Souhane (373 ha, 5.2 %); Larbaa (151 ha, 1.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Souhane and came within 3.0 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 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 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.