How long did the Diendé fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 February 2019 to 9 March 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 February 2019 to 2 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,940 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Diendé (4,829 ha, 3.5 %); Saré Bidji (1,147 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 · 2019-02-26 → 2019-03-09

Diendé fire, 26 February 2019 Diendé, Saré Bidji

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2019, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2019 in Diendé, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,940 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Sédhiou since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 5 in Senegal in 2019, of 57.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Saré Bidji · 2017 Diendé · 2026 Diendé · 2026

Burnt area: 5,940ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 26 Feb 2019 – 9 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 26 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 191; in a single hotspot: 79 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 144MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb9 Mar

Play back 9 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

26 Feb 28 Feb 2 Mar 4 Mar 6 Mar 8 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

39°high

47km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 457 ha in 2016, 1,095 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,176 ha that had burned before.

59 ha Saré Bidji fire, February 2017 2,373 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (59 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

Diendé where it started

4,829 ha reached on 26 Feb

3.5 %
Saré Bidji

1,147 ha reached on 1 Mar

2.0 %

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 area2.3 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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	Danger (FWI)
26 Feb	35.1 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 59
27 Feb	33.8 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 60
28 Feb	34.4 °C	15 %	44 km/h	Extreme 64
1 Mar	33.7 °C	14 %	47 km/h	Extreme 66
2 Mar	34.9 °C	13 %	39 km/h	Extreme 60
3 Mar	35.8 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
4 Mar	36.4 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 57
5 Mar	37.8 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
6 Mar	38.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Extreme 53
7 Mar	38.0 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Extreme 59
8 Mar	37.4 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 58
9 Mar	37.3 °C	16 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Mar after	38.1 °C	16 %	32 km/h	Extreme 52
11 Mar after	40.0 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 60
12 Mar after	39.1 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 61
13 Mar after	38.5 °C	14 %	43 km/h	Extreme 66
14 Mar after	39.0 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 62
15 Mar after	40.0 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
16 Mar after	40.1 °C	14 %	26 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Mar after	40.0 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Extreme 56
18 Mar after	39.2 °C	16 %	22 km/h	Extreme 54
19 Mar after	39.6 °C	20 %	25 km/h	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Feb 2019

After · 16 Mar 2019

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 · 191Every 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 Diendé fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 February 2019 to 9 March 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 February 2019 to 2 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,940 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Diendé (4,829 ha, 3.5 %); Saré Bidji (1,147 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 2 March 2019 → 9 March 2019.
27 October 2026 Start date: 27 February 2019 → 26 February 2019.

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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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 27 February 2019 to 2 March 2019. 191 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.

Where it burned