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Bonconto fire, March 2021 Bonconto

Out · last detection 15 Mar 2021, 14:48 UTC

The fire started on 10 March 2021 in Bonconto, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,810 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 80th largest in Kolda since 2016 (of 195 with a page). Number 37 in Senegal in 2021, of 73.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.6 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 · 2017Bonconto · 2016Bonconto · 2026Bonconto · 2021

Burnt area
2,810ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
10 Mar 2021 – 15 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Mar
2021
Heat detections
86
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
67MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Mar15 Mar
15 Mar 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 2021 · 168 MW · 27 11 Mar 2021 · 82 MW · 16 12 Mar 2021 · 49 MW · 10 13 Mar 2021 · 59 MW · 15 14 Mar 2021 · 27 MW · 11 15 Mar 2021 · 18 MW · 7
10 Mar 11 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 15 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
43km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 993 ha in 2016, 1,545 ha in 2017, 229 ha in 2018, 205 ha in 2019, 999 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,411 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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. Bonconto where it started
    2,827 ha reached on 10 Mar
    1.0 %

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.

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)
10 Mar 39.3 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Mar 39.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Mar 39.2 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Mar 38.6 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Mar 39.4 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Mar 41.0 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Mar after 40.6 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Mar after 39.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Mar after 38.9 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Mar after 38.0 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Mar after 40.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Mar after 39.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Mar after 40.4 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Mar after 40.0 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Mar after 41.8 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Mar after 42.0 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Mar 2021
After · 22 Mar 2021

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 · 86Every 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 Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bonconto fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 March 2021 and 15 March 2021: 6 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 2,810 hectares (28.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bonconto (2,827 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 86 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.