How long did the Békui fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2025 and 1 March 2025: 4 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 1,236 hectares (12.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bondokui (646 ha, 0.5 %); Békui (597 ha, 1.2 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). It is not an official report.

BF · Burkina Faso · 2025-02-26 → 2025-03-01

Békui fire, February 2025 Bondokui, Békui

Out · last detection 1 Mar 2025, 14:17 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2025 in Békui, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,236 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 46th largest in Guiriko since 2016 (of 85 with a page). Number 446 in Burkina Faso in 2025, of 609.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.8 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: 1,236ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 26 Feb 2025 – 1 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; communes
Started on: 26 Feb; 2025
Heat detections: 26; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Energy released: 179MW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Mar 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb1 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

2627281

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

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 110 ha in 2024.

110 ha Békui fire, January 2024 1,262 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Bondokui

646 ha reached on 1 Mar

0.5 %
Békui where it started

597 ha reached on 26 Feb

1.2 %

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.

↔

Before · 19 Feb 2025

After · 8 Mar 2025

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 25 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10538 µg/m³

Optical depth0.76

WHO 15

24252627281234

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 · 26Every 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 Burkina Faso ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Békui fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2025 and 1 March 2025: 4 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 1,236 hectares (12.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bondokui (646 ha, 0.5 %); Békui (597 ha, 1.2 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 ↗

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 really happened?

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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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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