How long did the Zekri fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2022 and 16 August 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 611 hectares (6.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zekri (12 ha, 0.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.4 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 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2022-08-15 → 2022-08-16

Zekri fire, 15 August 2022 زكري · Zekri

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2022, 13:02 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2022 in Zekri, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 611 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

We are reviewing this page: some of its data look inconsistent (the place, the dates or the area), so treat them with caution.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Beni Ksila · 2020 Zekri · 2021 Azazga · 2021 Taourirt Ighil · 2023

Burnt area: 611ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 2days; 15 Aug 2022 – 16 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 15 Aug; 2022
Heat detections: 20; in a single hotspot: 340 MW
Danger at start: 50; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug16 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2022 · 1,353 MW · 20

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

57km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 19 Aug.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31 ha in 2020.

31 ha Beni Ksila fire, August 2020 245 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.1 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Zekri زكري 3,286 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the town where it started

12 ha

0.1 %

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 land22 %

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)
15 Aug	35.0 °C	24 %	57 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 50
16 Aug	32.8 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Aug after	31.1 °C	31 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
18 Aug after	30.0 °C	25 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
19 Aug after	27.3 °C	49 %	35 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2022

After · 23 Aug 2022

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 15 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1058 µg/m³

Optical depth1.01

WHO 15

13141516171819

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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zekri fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2022 and 16 August 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 611 hectares (6.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zekri (12 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.4 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 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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. 20 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