How long did the Bonconto fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 January 2017 to 8 February 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 February 2017 to 8 February 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,056 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bonconto (3,075 ha, 1.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

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

SN · Senegal · 2017-01-28 → 2017-02-08

Bonconto fire, January 2017 Bonconto

Out · last detection 8 Feb 2017, 02:51 UTC

The fire started on 28 January 2017 in Bonconto, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,056 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 63th largest in Kolda since 2016 (of 195 with a page). Number 20 in Senegal in 2017, of 75.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bonconto · 2016 Bonconto · 2026 Bonconto · 2021 Bonconto · 2026

Burnt area: 3,056ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 28 Jan 2017 – 8 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 28 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 108; in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start: 62; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 28MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jan8 Feb

Play back 8 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jan 30 Jan 2 Feb 4 Feb 6 Feb 7 Feb 8 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 654 ha in 2016.

654 ha Bonconto fire, February 2016 2,386 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Bonconto where it started

3,075 ha reached on 28 Jan

1.1 %

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.

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)
3 Feb	35.5 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
4 Feb	36.6 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
5 Feb	35.7 °C	10 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
6 Feb	36.9 °C	9 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
7 Feb	37.5 °C	11 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
8 Feb	36.8 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
9 Feb after	36.6 °C	7 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
10 Feb after	37.7 °C	7 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 Feb after	35.9 °C	14 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
12 Feb after	35.8 °C	13 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
13 Feb after	37.4 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
14 Feb after	38.7 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 56
15 Feb after	40.0 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
16 Feb after	39.8 °C	12 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
17 Feb after	38.2 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Feb after	38.1 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Jan 2017

After · 15 Feb 2017

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 · 108Every 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 Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bonconto fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 January 2017 to 8 February 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 February 2017 to 8 February 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,056 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bonconto (3,075 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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: 18 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 18.

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 3 February 2017 to 8 February 2017. 108 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