Bandafassi fire, 26 December 2024 Bandafassi
The fire started on 26 December 2024 in Bandafassi, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,807 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 43th largest in Kédougou since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 18 in Senegal in 2024, of 65.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,807ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 26 Dec 2024 – 3 Jan 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 108
- in a single hotspot: 182 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 156MW
- 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: 887 ha in 2016, 749 ha in 2017, 133 ha in 2019, 2,261 ha in 2020, 2,376 ha in 2021, 1,281 ha in 2022, 2,067 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,555 ha that had burned before.
- 2,067 ha Bandafassi fire, January 2023 5,982 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,600 ha Bandafassi fire, December 2021 3,334 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,224 ha Bandafassi fire, January 2022 10,531 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,010 ha Bandafassi fire, January 2020 31,411 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Bandafassi fire, January 2021 9,627 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
-
Bandafassi where it started3,831 ha reached on 27 Dec0.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Dec | 36.4 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Dec | 37.3 °C | 16 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 28 Dec | 37.2 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Dec | 37.2 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 30 Dec | 36.9 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 31 Dec | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 1 Jan | 34.8 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 2 Jan | 34.5 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 3 Jan | 33.7 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 4 Jan after | 33.5 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 5 Jan after | 34.7 °C | 19 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 7 Jan after | 37.2 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 8 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Jan after | 37.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 11 Jan after | 35.0 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 13 Jan after | 36.5 °C | 19 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 24 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 95 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 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)
Detections table · 108Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 34,293 haBandafassi12 January 2023 · 7 days · 21 km away
- 31,411 haBandafassi2 January 2020 · 19 days · 21 km away
- 25,335 haBandafassi8 February 2026 · 21 days · 23 km away
- 30,325 haBandafassi23 January 2016 · 19 days · 29 km away
- 24,965 haMissira28 December 2024 · 7 days · 31 km away
- 32,881 haBandafassi18 January 2025 · 16 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bandafassi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 December 2024 and 3 January 2025: 9 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 3,807 hectares (38.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bandafassi (3,831 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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: 18 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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. 108 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.