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Bilimono fire, 14 December 2019 Bilimono, Tendéné-Bambarasso

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2020, 13:44 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2019 in Bilimono, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,622 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 5 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2019, of 146.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bilimono · 2017Bilimono · 2018Bilimono · 2022

Burnt area
6,622ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
14 Dec 2019 – 5 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
2
sub-prefectures
Started on
14 Dec
2019
Heat detections
277
in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
119MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec5 Jan
6 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2019 · 98 MW · 13 15 Dec 2019 · 3 MW · 1 16 Dec 2019 · 96 MW · 16 17 Dec 2019 · 230 MW · 21 19 Dec 2019 · 12 MW · 2 20 Dec 2019 · 375 MW · 29 21 Dec 2019 · 362 MW · 34 22 Dec 2019 · 183 MW · 19 23 Dec 2019 · 42 MW · 8 24 Dec 2019 · 65 MW · 6 25 Dec 2019 · 136 MW · 22 26 Dec 2019 · 262 MW · 13 27 Dec 2019 · 21 MW · 6 28 Dec 2019 · 213 MW · 14 29 Dec 2019 · 414 MW · 13 30 Dec 2019 · 25 MW · 7 31 Dec 2019 · 31 MW · 2 1 Jan 2020 · 73 MW · 10 2 Jan 2020 · 68 MW · 28 3 Jan 2020 · 7 MW · 6 4 Jan 2020 · 11 MW · 3 5 Jan 2020 · 4 MW · 3 6 Jan 2020 · 8 MW · 1
14 Dec 19 Dec 23 Dec 27 Dec 29 Dec 31 Dec 4 Jan

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
33km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 272 ha in 2017, 7 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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
    6,582 ha reached on 14 Dec
    2.0 %
  2. Tendéné-Bambarasso
    79 ha reached on 16 Dec
    0.1 %

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 36.4 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Dec 35.5 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Dec 35.0 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Dec 35.3 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Dec 34.7 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
19 Dec 35.2 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Dec 35.7 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Dec 35.0 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Dec 35.3 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Dec 36.3 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Dec 35.5 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Dec 34.9 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Dec 34.9 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Dec 34.6 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Dec 34.5 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Dec 35.3 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Dec 34.9 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Dec 34.5 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Jan 33.6 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Jan 32.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jan 30.3 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jan 30.0 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Jan 32.4 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jan after 32.7 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Jan after 33.9 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jan after 34.9 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Jan after 35.2 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jan after 35.7 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jan after 34.6 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jan after 35.2 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jan after 35.8 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jan after 33.8 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan after 35.2 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2019
After · 12 Jan 2020

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 · 277Every 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 2019 to 5 January 2020 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 December 2019 to 2 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,622 hectares (66.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bilimono (6,582 ha, 2.0 %); Tendéné-Bambarasso (79 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 December 2019 to 2 January 2020. 277 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.