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Timezrit fire, July 2023 تيمزريت · Naciria, Timezrit, Bordj Menaiel

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2023, 01:11 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2023 in Timezrit, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,736 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Boumerdes since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 5 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Burnt area
2,736ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
23 Jul 2023 – 24 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
5
communes
Started on
23 Jul
2023
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
315MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Jul 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul24 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2324

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
55km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 43 ha in 2020, 90 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Naciria الناصرية، بومرداس 22,431 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the town
    1,144 ha
    20 %
  2. Timezrit تيمزريت 9,991 inhabitants · 0.2 km from the town where it started
    551 ha reached on 23 Jul
    24 %
  3. Bordj Menaiel برج منايل 64,820 inhabitants · 5.9 km from the town
    528 ha reached on 24 Jul
    5.5 %
  4. Isser يسر 32,580 inhabitants · 9.4 km from the town
    298 ha
    4.5 %
  5. Ait Yahia Moussa أيت يحي موسى 20,426 inhabitants · 6.4 km from the town
    220 ha reached on 24 Jul
    3.4 %

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 forest86 %
  • Other natural land10 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.8 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.3 %
  • Agricultural areas1.0 %

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)
23 Jul 41.8 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Jul 39.2 °C 5 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
25 Jul after 31.6 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul after 30.2 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Jul after 33.5 °C 41 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jul after 29.8 °C 62 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
29 Jul after 29.7 °C 64 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Jul after 30.3 °C 55 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Jul after 30.4 °C 53 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Aug after 30.5 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Aug after 32.1 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Aug after 33.1 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2023
After · 31 Jul 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 25 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10110 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
21222324252627
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 · 20Every 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 Timezrit fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2023 and 24 July 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,736 hectares (27.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Naciria (1,144 ha, 20 %); Timezrit (551 ha, 24 %); Bordj Menaiel (528 ha, 5.5 %); Isser (298 ha, 4.5 %); Ait Yahia Moussa (220 ha, 3.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.2 km of Timezrit. 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 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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

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.