How long did the Diendé fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 March 2026 to 26 March 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2026 to 19 March 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,967 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Diendé (6,938 ha, 5.0 %); Saré Bidji (75 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2026-03-06 → 2026-03-26

Diendé fire, March 2026 Diendé, Saré Bidji

Out · last detection 26 Mar 2026, 14:12 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2026 in Diendé, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,967 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Sédhiou since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 21 in Senegal in 2026, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ndorna · 2020 Saré Bidji · 2018 Ndorna · 2023 Diendé · 2026

Burnt area: 6,967ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 6 Mar 2026 – 26 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 6 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 140; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 65MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar26 Mar

Play back 26 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 13 Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 26 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

42km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 182 ha in 2016, 29 ha in 2018, 1,529 ha in 2019, 1,553 ha in 2020, 960 ha in 2022, 211 ha in 2023, 906 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,719 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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

6,938 ha reached on 6 Mar

5.0 %
Saré Bidji

75 ha

0.1 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area5.4 ha

Residents≈ 850

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.4 hectares of built-up land and about 850 residents (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

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)
6 Mar	38.1 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
7 Mar	38.5 °C	23 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
8 Mar	39.1 °C	18 %	39 km/h	Extreme 51
9 Mar	40.6 °C	18 %	40 km/h	Extreme 52
10 Mar	40.1 °C	17 %	35 km/h	Extreme 50
11 Mar	38.9 °C	16 %	42 km/h	Extreme 56
12 Mar	39.9 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
13 Mar	39.0 °C	18 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
14 Mar	38.5 °C	20 %	32 km/h	Very high 50
15 Mar	40.0 °C	18 %	37 km/h	Extreme 53
16 Mar	39.0 °C	19 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
17 Mar	37.5 °C	25 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
18 Mar	36.5 °C	29 %	28 km/h	Very high 44
19 Mar	37.2 °C	26 %	24 km/h	Very high 45
20 Mar	37.0 °C	27 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
21 Mar	36.7 °C	32 %	33 km/h	Very high 47
22 Mar	37.0 °C	30 %	32 km/h	Very high 46
23 Mar	34.0 °C	29 %	32 km/h	Very high 46
24 Mar	36.1 °C	26 %	29 km/h	Very high 42
25 Mar	35.7 °C	29 %	30 km/h	Very high 44
26 Mar	36.0 °C	24 %	29 km/h	Very high 46
27 Mar after	37.2 °C	26 %	26 km/h	Very high 43
28 Mar after	38.9 °C	26 %	26 km/h	Very high 44
29 Mar after	40.0 °C	19 %	30 km/h	Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Feb 2026

After · 2 Apr 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10228 µg/m³

Optical depth0.61

WHO 15

45678910111213141516171819202122

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 140Every 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 6 March 2026 to 26 March 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2026 to 19 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,967 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Diendé (6,938 ha, 5.0 %); Saré Bidji (75 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 19 March 2026 → 26 March 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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 March 2026 to 19 March 2026. 140 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 2025, 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