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Bambadinca fire, 14 March 2016 Bambadinca, Mansabá, Mansôa

Out · last detection 30 Mar 2016, 14:06 UTC

The fire started on 14 March 2016 in Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,379 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Bafatá since 2016 (of 73 with a page). Number 4 in Guinea-Bissau in 2016, of 46.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mansabá · 2019Bambadinca · 2017Farim · 2024Farim · 2026

Burnt area
3,379ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
14 Mar 2016 – 30 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
3
sectors
Started on
14 Mar
2016
Heat detections
101
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
48MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Mar30 Mar
30 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Mar 2016 · 6 MW · 1 16 Mar 2016 · 9 MW · 1 18 Mar 2016 · 26 MW · 4 19 Mar 2016 · 43 MW · 3 20 Mar 2016 · 11 MW · 1 21 Mar 2016 · 10 MW · 2 22 Mar 2016 · 31 MW · 8 23 Mar 2016 · 18 MW · 3 24 Mar 2016 · 50 MW · 6 25 Mar 2016 · 227 MW · 15 26 Mar 2016 · 63 MW · 16 27 Mar 2016 · 51 MW · 11 28 Mar 2016 · 65 MW · 14 29 Mar 2016 · 49 MW · 10 30 Mar 2016 · 59 MW · 6
14 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 25 Mar 28 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
37km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

  1. Bambadinca where it started
    2,298 ha reached on 14 Mar
    2.6 %
  2. Mansabá
    970 ha reached on 16 Mar
    0.8 %
  3. Mansôa
    133 ha reached on 25 Mar
    0.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
14 Mar 36.7 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Mar 37.3 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Mar 40.2 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Mar 39.1 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Mar 39.7 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Mar 39.6 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Mar 38.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Mar 38.1 °C 24 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Mar 37.7 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Mar 39.7 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Mar 37.5 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Mar 37.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Mar 38.6 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Mar 39.5 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Mar 40.8 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Mar 39.5 °C 16 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Mar 37.7 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Mar after 35.5 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Apr after 36.5 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Apr after 38.1 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Apr after 37.8 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Apr after 39.5 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Apr after 40.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Apr after 38.8 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Apr after 37.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Apr after 35.2 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Apr after 36.8 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Mar 2016
After · 6 Apr 2016

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 · 101Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guinea-Bissau ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bambadinca fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 March 2016 to 30 March 2016 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 March 2016 to 30 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,379 hectares (33.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bambadinca (2,298 ha, 2.6 %); Mansabá (970 ha, 0.8 %); Mansôa (133 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea-Bissau (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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 March 2016 to 30 March 2016. 101 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.