How long did the Bako fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 January 2024 to 25 January 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2024 to 19 January 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,164 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bako (1,171 ha, 0.6 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CI · Côte d’Ivoire · 2024-01-12 → 2024-01-25

Bako fire, January 2024 Bako

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2024, 14:36 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2024 in Bako, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,164 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Denguélé since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 125 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2024, of 165.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 1,164ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 12 Jan 2024 – 25 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 12 Jan; 2024
Heat detections: 37; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Average daily power: 28MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 25 Jan 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan25 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jan 16 Jan 18 Jan 22 Jan 25 Jan

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

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 449 ha in 2016.

449 ha Bako fire, January 2016 1,684 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Bako where it started

1,171 ha reached on 12 Jan

0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Jan 2024

After · 1 Feb 2024

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 28 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 75 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak75 µg/m³

Days over the guideline19 days

PM10199 µg/m³

Optical depth0.51

WHO 15

10111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 37Every 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 Côte d’Ivoire ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bako fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 January 2024 to 25 January 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2024 to 19 January 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,164 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bako (1,171 ha, 0.6 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (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: 180

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · 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?

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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 180.

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.

Where it burned