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Tichy fire, July 2020 تيشي · Tichy, Boukhelifa

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2020, 12:11 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2020 in Tichy, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 943 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 18 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
943ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
28 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
28 Jul
2020
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
602MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

282930311

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Tichy تيشي 16,546 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the town where it started
    661 ha reached on 28 Jul
    12 %
  2. Boukhelifa بوخليفة 8,766 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the town
    283 ha reached on 30 Jul
    2.4 %

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 forest63 %
  • Other natural land37 %

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 Jul 34.1 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Jul 33.9 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Jul 33.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul 34.6 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Aug after 31.6 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 33.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Aug after 29.6 °C 27 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Aug after 21.8 °C 59 % 42 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2020
After · 7 Aug 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 2 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1050 µg/m³
26272829303112345
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 · 60Every 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 Tichy fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 July 2020 and 31 July 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 943 hectares (9.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tichy (661 ha, 12 %); Boukhelifa (283 ha, 2.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.9 km of Boukhelifa. 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 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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.