How long did the Bolodou fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 January 2018 and 26 January 2018: 8 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 2,628 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bolodou (2,645 ha, 5.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

GN · Guinea · 2018-01-19 → 2018-01-26

Bolodou fire, 19 January 2018 Bolodou

Out · last detection 26 Jan 2018, 02:52 UTC

The fire started on 19 January 2018 in Bolodou, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,628 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 93th largest in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 58 in Guinea in 2018, of 107.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bolodou · 2016 Bolodou · 2026 Bolodou · 2026 Bolodou · 2017

Burnt area: 2,628ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 19 Jan 2018 – 26 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 19 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 82; in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 159MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jan26 Jan

Play back 26 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jan 20 Jan 21 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 26 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

26km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 2 Feb.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,580 ha in 2016, 910 ha in 2017.

1,400 ha Bolodou fire, January 2016 7,743 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (26 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

Bolodou where it started

2,645 ha reached on 19 Jan

5.0 %

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.

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)
19 Jan	35.6 °C	16 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Jan	34.7 °C	25 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
21 Jan	35.2 °C	15 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
22 Jan	36.1 °C	12 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
23 Jan	34.6 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Jan	33.8 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Jan	34.9 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Jan	33.6 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Jan after	33.8 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Jan after	34.0 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.3 mm	High 36
29 Jan after	34.2 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.5 mm	High 33
30 Jan after	36.2 °C	25 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Jan after	34.0 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Feb after	33.6 °C	39 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
2 Feb after	31.6 °C	49 %	27 km/h	2.1 mm	Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Jan 2018

After · 2 Feb 2018

Before After

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 · 82Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bolodou fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 January 2018 and 26 January 2018: 8 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 2,628 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bolodou (2,645 ha, 5.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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.

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 82 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.

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.

Where it burned