Bandafassi fire, April 2026 Bandafassi
The fire started on 5 April 2026 in Bandafassi, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,372 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 93th largest in Kédougou since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 92 in Senegal in 2026, of 125.
The power measured by the satellite is low (27.0 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
- 2,372ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 5 Apr 2026 – 10 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Apr
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 27
- in a single hotspot: 27 MW
- Energy released
- 197MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,046 ha in 2017, 69 ha in 2019, 635 ha in 2020, 1,651 ha in 2021, 1,561 ha in 2022, 278 ha in 2024, 1,836 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,364 ha that had burned before.
- 1,651 ha Bandafassi fire, March 2021 2,878 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,349 ha Bandafassi fire, February 2022 2,899 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 633 ha Bandafassi fire, December 2025 2,663 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 278 ha Bandafassi fire, February 2024 2,841 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 212 ha Bandafassi fire, January 2022 10,531 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 23 ha Bandafassi fire, December 2025 2,452 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Bandafassi where it started2,387 ha reached on 5 Apr0.4 %
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.
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 3 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.6 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 · 27Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bandafassi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2026 and 10 April 2026: 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 2,372 hectares (23.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bandafassi (2,387 ha, 0.4 %).
- 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
Satellite cross-check
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
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.