Albadariah fire, 1 February 2023 Albadariah, Douako
The fire started on 1 February 2023 in Albadariah, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,736 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 96th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 24 in Guinea in 2023, of 78.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,736ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 1 Feb 2023 – 6 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 1 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 59
- in a single hotspot: 101 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 142MW
- 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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,201 ha in 2017, 1,089 ha in 2018, 852 ha in 2019, 72 ha in 2020, 2,089 ha in 2021, 1,430 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,534 ha that had burned before.
- 2,089 ha Douako fire, January 2021 12,160 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,429 ha Douako fire, February 2022 2,648 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,201 ha Manfran fire, January 2017 70,029 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 182 ha Albadariah fire, February 2019 16,530 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 72 ha Albadariah fire, January 2020 7,858 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Douako fire, January 2020 3,750 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Albadariah fire, January 2022 7,864 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 started1,554 ha reached on 1 Feb2.2 %
-
1,199 ha reached on 1 Feb0.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Feb | 36.4 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Feb | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 3 Feb | 35.8 °C | 12 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 4 Feb | 36.4 °C | 12 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Feb | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 6 Feb | 37.0 °C | 10 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Feb after | 36.0 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Feb after | 35.9 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Feb after | 32.6 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Feb after | 35.0 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Feb after | 35.5 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 12 Feb after | 37.2 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Feb after | 38.0 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Feb after | 35.6 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Feb after | 34.6 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Feb after | 35.7 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 6 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 135 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 · 59Every 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 · 29 days · 10 km away
- 72,176 haAlbadariah7 January 2026 · 50 days · 13 km away
- 22,404 haDouako12 January 2018 · 20 days · 18 km away
- 19,542 haManfran24 January 2020 · 23 days · 26 km away
- 26,206 haManfran17 January 2021 · 18 days · 31 km away
- 25,026 haFirawaJanuary 2016 · 22 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Albadariah fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 February 2023 and 6 February 2023: 6 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 2,736 hectares (27.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Albadariah (1,554 ha, 2.2 %); Douako (1,199 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 59 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 2025, 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.