How long did the Zbarbar fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 7 July 2023 and 7 July 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 145 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zbarbar (145 ha, 2.5 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Zbarbar and came within 6.7 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 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2023-07-07 → 2023-07-07

Zbarbar fire, 7 July 2023 معالة · Zbarbar

Out · last measured on 7 Jul 2023

The fire started on 7 July 2023 in Zbarbar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 145 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 33th largest in Blida since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 62 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zbarbar · 2021 Zbarbar · 2023 Maala · 2023 Kadiria · 2026

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: 145ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 7 Jul 2023 – 7 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 7 Jul; 2023
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index

The weather it burned in

41°high

65km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2021.

49 ha Zbarbar fire, August 2021 844 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Zbarbar معالة 5,296 inhabitants · 6.7 km from the centre where it started

145 ha

2.5 %

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 forest73 %
Other natural land27 %

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)
7 Jul	41.0 °C	21 %	65 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
8 Jul after	37.7 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
9 Jul after	38.4 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	High 33
10 Jul after	42.8 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 45
11 Jul after	43.6 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 45
12 Jul after	42.8 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 46
13 Jul after	37.9 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Jul after	36.2 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Jul after	38.9 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
16 Jul after	39.8 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Jul after	41.9 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jun 2023

After · 14 Jul 2023

Before After

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 7 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10142 µg/m³

Optical depth1.30

WHO 15

5678910

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 Zbarbar fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 7 July 2023 and 7 July 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 145 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zbarbar (145 ha, 2.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Zbarbar and came within 6.7 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 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned