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Zekri fire, August 2017 زكري · Zekri

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2017, 00:57 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2017 in Zekri, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 273 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 66 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Burnt area
273ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
28 Aug 2017 – 30 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
28 Aug
2017
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
453MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Aug 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug30 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

282930

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
44km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 2 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Zekri زكري 3,286 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the town where it started
    213 ha reached on 28 Aug
    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 forest96 %
  • Other natural land2.6 %
  • Coniferous forest1.1 %

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 Aug 30.3 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
29 Aug 30.0 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
30 Aug 27.6 °C 51 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
31 Aug after 28.9 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
1 Sept after 30.5 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
2 Sept after 23.5 °C 56 % 40 km/h 2.3 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2017
After · 6 Sept 2017

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 28 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1032 µg/m³
26272829303112
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 · 13Every 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 Zekri fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 August 2017 and 30 August 2017: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 273 hectares (2.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zekri (213 ha, 2.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.9 km of Zekri. 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 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 44 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

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.