Toudja fire, August 2021 توجة · Toudja, El Kseur, Oued Ghir
The fire started on 10 August 2021 in Toudja, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 9,887 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 2 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.
- Burnt area
- 9,887ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 10 Aug 2021 – 16 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 459
- in a single hotspot: 934 MW
- Danger at start
- 76
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 19.9GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 17 Aug.
This area had burned before
9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 243 ha in 2016, 490 ha in 2017, 160 ha in 2020.
- 490 ha Toudja fire, August 2017 489 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 243 ha Toudja fire, October 2016 302 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha Toudja fire, July 2020 1,078 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha El Kseur fire, August 2020 465 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
6,590 ha reached on 10 Aug39 %
-
3,034 ha reached on 10 Aug31 %
-
281 ha reached on 10 Aug5.8 %
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 forest78 %
- Other natural land21 %
- Agricultural areas0.6 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Feux de Toudja · Incendies de Béjaïa (Toudja, El-Kseur, Boukhelifa, Aokas) · Feux de forêt de 2021 en Algérie
- According to the sources, several fires that ended up merging:
- Toudja 10 August 2021
- El-Kseur 10 August 2021
- Boukhelifa 10 August 2021
- Barbacha (Aït Sid-Ali) 10 August 2021
- Aokas 10 August 2021
Sources
- BÉJAÏA : 80% du territoire de Toudja dévorés par les flammes — Liberté (Argelia), 15 August 2021
- Les feux menacent toujours les forêts de Béjaïa — Le Jeune Indépendant, 14 August 2021
- Cinq morts dans des incendies à Béjaïa — Liberté (Argelia), 12 August 2021
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Aug | 44.0 °C | 7 % | 71 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 11 Aug | 42.7 °C | 8 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 12 Aug | 42.2 °C | 9 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 13 Aug | 37.9 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 14 Aug | 38.3 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Aug | 39.9 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 16 Aug | 37.6 °C | 13 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 17 Aug after | 25.3 °C | 67 % | 41 km/h | 3.5 mm | Low 6 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 204 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 82: 5.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 459Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Toudja fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2021 and 16 August 2021: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 9,887 hectares (98.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Toudja (6,590 ha, 39 %); El Kseur (3,034 ha, 31 %); Oued Ghir (281 ha, 5.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.2 km of Toudja. 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 44.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, 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
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.