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Bilimono fire, 14 December 2018 Bilimono

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2018, 13:51 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2018 in Bilimono, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,457 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 17 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2018, of 98.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bilimono · 2017Parc national de la Comoé · 2022Parc national de la Comoé · 2016Parc national de la Comoé · 2024

Burnt area
2,457ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
14 Dec 2018 – 22 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
14 Dec
2018
Heat detections
56
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
89MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec22 Dec
23 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2018 · 83 MW · 8 15 Dec 2018 · 57 MW · 9 16 Dec 2018 · 275 MW · 24 17 Dec 2018 · 110 MW · 13 22 Dec 2018 · 1 MW · 1 23 Dec 2018 · 6 MW · 1
14 Dec 15 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
32km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,212 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

  1. Bilimono where it started
    2,472 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Dec 34.1 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Dec 34.9 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Dec 34.1 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Dec 34.2 °C 25 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Dec 34.0 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Dec 34.4 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Dec 32.5 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Dec 34.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Dec 32.4 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Dec after 32.9 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Dec after 32.7 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Dec after 31.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Dec after 32.5 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Dec after 33.4 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Dec after 33.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Dec after 32.3 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Dec after 33.2 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Dec after 34.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Jan after 34.0 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2018
After · 29 Dec 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 56Every 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 Côte d’Ivoire ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bilimono fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 December 2018 to 22 December 2018 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 December 2018 to 17 December 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,457 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilimono (2,472 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (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: 180 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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

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
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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 180.

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 14 December 2018 to 17 December 2018. 56 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 2020, 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.