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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 2,249 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in Kédougou since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 87 in Senegal in 2025, of 112.

Burnt area
2,249ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
24 Dec 2025 – 30 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
24 Dec
2025
Heat detections
36
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Energy released
765MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec30 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

24252627293031

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

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 268 ha in 2017, 10 ha in 2019, 38 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Bembou where it started
    2,265 ha reached on 24 Dec
    0.6 %

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 · 17 Dec 2025
After · 6 Jan 2026

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 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10269 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
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 · 36Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 2,249 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bembou (2,265 ha, 0.6 %).
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
What do you think is wrong?

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.