How long did the Bembou fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 December 2025 and 30 December 2025: 7 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 3,277 hectares (32.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bembou (3,300 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.

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.

SN · Senegal · 2025-12-24 → 2025-12-30

Bembou fire, 24 December 2025 Bembou

Out · last detection 31 Dec 2025, 14:04 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2025 in Bembou, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,277 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Kédougou since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 31 in Senegal in 2025, of 112.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.2 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: 3,277ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 24 Dec 2025 – 30 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 24 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 49; in a single hotspot: 24 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Energy released: 402MW; sum of detected power

Play back 31 Dec 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec30 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

242526273031

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

28km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,554 ha in 2016, 822 ha in 2017, 1,145 ha in 2018, 181 ha in 2019, 655 ha in 2021, 1,489 ha in 2022, 503 ha in 2023, 44 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,038 ha that had burned before.

1,489 ha Bembou fire, December 2022 2,386 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Bembou where it started

3,300 ha reached on 24 Dec

0.9 %

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.

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)
24 Dec	34.5 °C	26 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Dec	34.9 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Dec	34.6 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Dec	34.3 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Dec	34.8 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Dec	35.7 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Dec	35.5 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 Dec after	36.5 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Jan after	35.6 °C	23 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Jan after	36.0 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Jan after	35.8 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
4 Jan after	35.4 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Jan after	35.2 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Jan after	32.3 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 42
7 Jan after	31.3 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	High 30
8 Jan after	31.5 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Jan after	33.5 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Dec 2025

After · 6 Jan 2026

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 22 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak73 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10261 µg/m³

Optical depth0.46

WHO 15

2223242526272829303112

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 · 49Every 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 Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bembou fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 December 2025 and 30 December 2025: 7 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 3,277 hectares (32.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bembou (3,300 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
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

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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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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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 18.

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