Bilimono fire, 14 January 2021 Bilimono, Parc national de la Comoé
The fire started on 14 January 2021 in Bilimono, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,088 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 13th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 7 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2021, of 124.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,088ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 14 Jan 2021 – 24 Jan 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 14 Jan
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 167
- in a single hotspot: 108 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 229MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,548 ha in 2016, 20 ha in 2019, 1,995 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,267 ha that had burned before.
- 1,923 ha Parc national de la Comoé fire, December 2016 36,896 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,539 ha Parc national de la Comoé fire, December 2019 73,087 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 624 ha Bilimono fire, December 2016 1,055 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 456 ha Bilimono fire, January 2020 1,379 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Bilimono fire, January 2019 1,157 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bilimono where it started3,608 ha reached on 17 Jan1.1 %
-
1,510 ha reached on 14 Jan0.2 %
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 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jan | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Jan | 36.3 °C | 11 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 22 Jan | 34.8 °C | 16 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 23 Jan | 35.5 °C | 14 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Jan | 35.9 °C | 12 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Jan after | 36.8 °C | 15 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 27 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Jan after | 36.7 °C | 17 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 29 Jan after | 36.3 °C | 23 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Jan after | 36.6 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Jan after | 36.4 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 16 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Feb after | 36.2 °C | 17 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 3 Feb after | 37.5 °C | 19 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 167Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 30,932 haParc national de la Comoé6 January 2022 · 28 days · 25 km away
- 39,531 haParc national de la Comoé27 November 2024 · 28 days · 27 km away
- 36,896 haParc national de la Comoé16 December 2016 · 32 days · 31 km away
- 90,945 haParc national de la Comoé6 December 2018 · 33 days · 33 km away
- 73,087 haParc national de la Comoé12 December 2019 · 57 days · 34 km away
- 35,713 haParc national de la Comoé7 December 2025 · 32 days · 39 km away
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 January 2021 to 24 January 2021 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2021 to 24 January 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,088 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bilimono (3,608 ha, 1.1 %); Parc national de la Comoé (1,510 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 20 January 2021 → 14 January 2021.
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
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 20 January 2021 to 24 January 2021. 167 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.
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.