How long did the Bangouya fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 April 2024 to 2 May 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 April 2024 to 28 April 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,083 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bangouya (1,884 ha, 1.7 %); Sangaréah (212 ha, 0.2 %).

Where does this data come from?

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

GN · Guinea · 2024-04-20 → 2024-05-02

Bangouya fire, April 2024 Bangouya, Sangaréah

Out · last detection 2 May 2024, 13:59 UTC

The fire started on 20 April 2024 in Bangouya, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,083 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 221th largest in Kindia since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 104 in Guinea in 2024, of 117.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sangaréah · 2019 Bangouya · 2017 Sinta · 2026

Burnt area: 2,083ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 20 Apr 2024 – 2 May 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 20 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 85; in a single hotspot: 115 MW
Average daily power: 202MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Apr2 May

Play back 2 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

20 Apr 25 Apr 26 Apr 28 Apr 1 May

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

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,152 ha in 2016, 203 ha in 2019, 80 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,142 ha that had burned before.

203 ha Sangaréah fire, April 2019 2,364 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Bangouya where it started

1,884 ha reached on 20 Apr

1.7 %
Sangaréah

212 ha reached on 25 Apr

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area2.9 ha

Residents≈ 800

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 800 residents (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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Apr 2024

After · 9 May 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 1 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10121 µg/m³

Optical depth0.93

WHO 15

23242526272829301

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 · 85Every 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 Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bangouya fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 April 2024 to 2 May 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 April 2024 to 28 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,083 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bangouya (1,884 ha, 1.7 %); Sangaréah (212 ha, 0.2 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 April 2024 → 2 May 2024.
27 October 2026 Start date: 25 April 2024 → 20 April 2024.

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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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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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 25 April 2024 to 28 April 2024. 85 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.

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 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