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Tassamert fire, July 2020 تاسمرت · Tassamert, Harbil, Guenzet

Out · last detection 2 Jul 2020, 01:53 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2020 in Tassamert, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 850 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Bordj Bou Arreidj since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 24 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Beni Maouche · 2026Beni Djellil · 2023

Burnt area
850ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
1 Jul 2020 – 3 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
4
communes
Started on
1 Jul
2020
Heat detections
125
in a single hotspot: 503 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
5.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul3 Jul
2 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2020 · 10,480 MW · 123 2 Jul 2020 · 5 MW · 2
1 Jul 2 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
55km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 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 0.5% of the area of London (8.5 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. Tassamert تاسمرت 5,269 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre where it started
    422 ha reached on 1 Jul
    8.3 %
  2. Harbil حربيل 3,675 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre
    187 ha reached on 1 Jul
    2.2 %
  3. Guenzet قنزات 3,541 inhabitants · 2.2 km from the centre
    167 ha reached on 1 Jul
    2.7 %
  4. Bordj Zemoura برج زمورة 10,296 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    75 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.8 %

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 forest81 %
  • Other natural land13 %
  • Broadleaved forest5.8 %

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)
1 Jul 36.1 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jul 34.8 °C 10 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Jul 30.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Jul after 24.9 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jul after 25.9 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul after 24.1 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul after 27.6 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Jul after 30.1 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Jul after 32.9 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Jul after 32.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
11 Jul after 33.6 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Jul after 30.9 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jun 2020
After · 10 Jul 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 1 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak35 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1059 µg/m³
293012345
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 · 125Every 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 Tassamert fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 July 2020 to 3 July 2020 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2020 to 2 July 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 850 hectares (8.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Tassamert (422 ha, 8.3 %); Harbil (187 ha, 2.2 %); Guenzet (167 ha, 2.7 %); Bordj Zemoura (75 ha, 0.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Bordj Zemoura: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 1 July 2020 to 2 July 2020. 125 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.