Arbinda fire, 12 November 2025 Arbinda
The fire started on 12 November 2025 in Arbinda, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,655 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 70th largest in Soum since 2016 (of 134 with a page). Number 309 in Burkina Faso in 2025, of 609.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks them up automatically when they are available.
- Burnt area
- 1,655ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 12 Nov 2025 – 12 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 12 Nov
- 2025
Where it burned
This area had burned before
11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 103 ha in 2020, 168 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 185 ha that had burned before.
- 168 ha Arbinda fire, October 2021 1,166 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 97 ha Arbinda fire, November 2020 1,076 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7 ha Arbinda fire, December 2020 2,212 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
-
Arbinda where it started1,665 ha0.6 %
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.
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 15 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 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)
Other fires nearby
- 8,161 haArbinda11 November 2020 · 7 days · 10 km away
- 24,590 haArbinda 19 October 2026 · 6 days · 15 km away
- 9,569 haArbinda27 October 2022 · 4 days · 23 km away
- 37,890 haArbinda26 October 2025 · 8 days · 28 km away
- 10,056 haArbinda28 January 2022 · 4 days · 31 km away
- 9,509 haKoutougouJanuary 2023 · 4 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Arbinda fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 November 2025 and 12 November 2025: 1 day 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 1,655 hectares (16.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Arbinda (1,665 ha, 0.6 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.