Albadariah fire, 24 January 2022 Albadariah, Douako
The fire started on 24 January 2022 in Albadariah, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,864 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 3 in Guinea in 2022, of 107.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,864ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 24 Jan 2022 – 3 Feb 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 24 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 371
- in a single hotspot: 87 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 321MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,940 ha in 2016, 5,041 ha in 2017, 1,811 ha in 2018, 3,828 ha in 2019, 3,393 ha in 2020, 2,940 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,319 ha that had burned before.
- 4,460 ha Manfran fire, January 2017 70,029 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,123 ha Albadariah fire, January 2016 14,222 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,745 ha Albadariah fire, February 2019 16,530 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,147 ha Albadariah fire, February 2020 7,858 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,663 ha Albadariah fire, January 2021 7,498 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,535 ha Albadariah fire, January 2018 2,176 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,277 ha Douako fire, January 2021 12,160 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 88 ha Albadariah fire, January 2016 15,872 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Albadariah where it started7,906 ha reached on 24 Jan11 %
-
8 ha0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 1.7 hectares of built-up land and about 600 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Jan | 34.6 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 25 Jan | 33.9 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 26 Jan | 34.6 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 27 Jan | 33.7 °C | 21 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Jan | 35.0 °C | 24 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Jan | 35.9 °C | 18 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Jan | 36.6 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 31 Jan | 36.0 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Feb | 33.9 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 2 Feb | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Feb | 34.6 °C | 10 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 4 Feb after | 35.9 °C | 10 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Feb after | 36.2 °C | 11 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 6 Feb after | 36.4 °C | 8 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Feb after | 35.3 °C | 11 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 8 Feb after | 34.7 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 9 Feb after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Feb after | 36.4 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 11 Feb after | 36.3 °C | 7 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 12 Feb after | 35.0 °C | 8 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 13 Feb after | 35.9 °C | 8 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
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.
Detections table · 371Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 70,029 haManfranJanuary 2017 · 16 days · 9 km away
- 72,176 haAlbadariah7 January 2026 · 48 days · 16 km away
- 19,542 haManfran24 January 2020 · 16 days · 16 km away
- 22,404 haDouako18 January 2018 · 11 days · 22 km away
- 25,026 haFirawaJanuary 2016 · 13 days · 25 km away
- 26,206 haManfran23 January 2021 · 9 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Albadariah fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 January 2022 and 3 February 2022: 11 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,864 hectares (78.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Albadariah (7,906 ha, 11 %); Douako (8 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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.
Satellite cross-check
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 371 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.