Burned area
satellite only8,224ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 18 Jan 2026 – 5 Feb 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BJ · Benin · –
Bassila fire, 18 January 2026 Bassila
Out · last detection 5 Feb 2026, 12:48 UTC
The fire started on 18 January 2026 in Bassila, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,224 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 9 in Benin in 2026, of 133.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only19days
18 Jan 2026 to 5 Feb 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 5 Feb 2026, 12:48 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only18 Jan 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 18 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only159
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 18 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 18 Jan 2026 – 5 Feb 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only149MW
Total radiative power on 23 January 2026; hotspots that day: 33.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 23 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model38.2FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 18 Jan 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.9°C · 20% RH
High of 38.9 °C and minimum humidity of 20% on 4 February 2026; gusts of 35 km/h on 4 February 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 18 Jan 2026 – 5 Feb 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 8,224 ha
- Dates
- 18 Jan 2026 – 5 Feb 2026
- Name
- Bassila
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/bassila-2026-01-2?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire bassila-2026-01-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-18 | 3 | 12 | 36.4 | 21.6 | 20 | 10 | 25.6 | 0 | 38.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-19 | 0 | 0 | 37.2 | 22.9 | 23 | 8.5 | 16.9 | 0 | 37.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-20 | 1 | 3 | 36.6 | 22.9 | 22 | 9 | 21.6 | 0 | 38 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-21 | 1 | 5 | 35.3 | 21.7 | 18 | 11.2 | 31 | 0 | 40.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-22 | 0 | 0 | 34.8 | 21.6 | 17 | 11.9 | 28.8 | 0 | 41.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-23 | 33 | 149 | 36.1 | 20.5 | 15 | 10.8 | 26.3 | 0 | 42.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-24 | 29 | 122 | 36.8 | 21.6 | 15 | 11.4 | 20.2 | 0 | 43.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-25 | 21 | 116 | 36.9 | 21.6 | 10 | 14 | 34.2 | 0 | 51 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-01-26 | 15 | 66 | 36.9 | 22.1 | 9 | 14.4 | 32.4 | 0 | 52.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-01-27 | 6 | 40 | 36.6 | 21.1 | 16 | 13.6 | 27.4 | 0 | 51.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-01-28 | 15 | 63 | 36.4 | 21.4 | 21 | 10.1 | 27 | 0 | 44.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-29 | 11 | 35 | 36.1 | 22.8 | 28 | 7.9 | 23 | 0 | 37.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-30 | 3 | 25 | 37.1 | 21.8 | 20 | 11.2 | 22.7 | 0 | 40.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-01-31 | 1 | 2 | 37.5 | 23.4 | 28 | 10.7 | 22 | 0 | 40.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-01 | 0 | 0 | 36.3 | 24.2 | 37 | 10.2 | 25.9 | 0.8 | 27.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-02 | 0 | 0 | 37.4 | 24.1 | 34 | 11 | 23 | 1.7 | 23.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-03 | 3 | 14 | 37.7 | 24.9 | 28 | 10.1 | 27 | 0.3 | 32.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-04 | 11 | 40 | 38.9 | 23.8 | 20 | 13 | 34.9 | 0 | 42.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-05 | 6 | 47 | 38.8 | 23.6 | 21 | 11.5 | 29.9 | 0 | 41 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-02-06 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 24.5 | 33 | 13.1 | 25.9 | 0 | 38.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-02-07 | 0 | 0 | 36.5 | 24.8 | 34 | 11.2 | 23.4 | 0.1 | 35.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2026-02-08 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 24.4 | 30 | 10.7 | 18 | 0 | 35.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2026-02-09 | 0 | 0 | 37.5 | 25.2 | 34 | 14 | 29.5 | 0 | 39 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-02-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.8 | 25.2 | 36 | 18.5 | 40 | 1.4 | 30 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 8,224ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 18 Jan 2026 – 5 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 18 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 159
- in a single hotspot: 18 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 49MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
18 Jan5 Feb
5 Feb 2026
How it evolved, day by day
18 Jan
23 Jan
26 Jan
29 Jan
3 Feb
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
39°high
35km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 10 Feb.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2019.
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
-
Bassila where it started8,271 ha reached on 18 Jan1.5 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside 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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 45 % of the area in Benin
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jan | 36.4 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 19 Jan | 37.2 °C | 23 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 20 Jan | 36.6 °C | 22 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 21 Jan | 35.3 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 22 Jan | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Jan | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Jan | 36.8 °C | 15 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Jan | 36.9 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 26 Jan | 36.9 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 27 Jan | 36.6 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Jan | 36.4 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Jan | 36.1 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Jan | 37.1 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 31 Jan | 37.5 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 1 Feb | 36.3 °C | 37 % | 26 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Feb | 37.4 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 23 |
| 3 Feb | 37.7 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Feb | 38.9 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Feb | 38.8 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Feb after | 37.0 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 7 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Feb after | 38.0 °C | 30 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Feb after | 37.5 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Feb after | 35.8 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 1.4 mm | High 30 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 11 Jan 2026
After · 12 Feb 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 17 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 94: 6.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10538 µg/m³
Optical depth1.27
WHO 15
16 Jan21 Jan26 Jan31 Jan5 Feb
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 · 159Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bassila fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 January 2026 to 5 February 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2026 to 30 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,224 hectares (82.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bassila (8,271 ha, 1.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 January 2026 to 30 January 2026. 159 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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.