Bilimono fire, 15 December 2024 Bilimono
The fire started on 15 December 2024 in Bilimono, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,288 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 65th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 37 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2024, of 164.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,288ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 15 Dec 2024 – 18 Dec 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 15 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 46 MW
- Average daily power
- 110MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 358 ha in 2016, 1,486 ha in 2018, 675 ha in 2019, 443 ha in 2020, 1,748 ha in 2021, 500 ha in 2022, 307 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,265 ha that had burned before.
- 1,186 ha Bilimono fire, January 2021 2,028 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 859 ha Bilimono fire, December 2017 1,655 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 628 ha Bilimono fire, December 2018 1,012 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 562 ha Bilimono fire, December 2021 1,303 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 500 ha Bilimono fire, December 2022 1,470 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 443 ha Bilimono fire, December 2020 1,446 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 417 ha Bilimono fire, December 2019 1,469 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 358 ha Bilimono fire, December 2016 1,022 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 started2,301 ha reached on 15 Dec0.7 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 16 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 98: 6.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 56Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bilimono fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 December 2024 to 18 December 2024 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 December 2024 to 17 December 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,288 hectares (22.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bilimono (2,301 ha, 0.7 %).
- 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.
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 15 December 2024 to 17 December 2024. 56 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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.