Dori fire, 19 October 2024 Dori, Seytenga, Sampelga
The fire started on 19 October 2024 in Dori, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,945 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Liptako since 2016 (of 222 with a page). Number 5 in Burkina Faso in 2024, of 380.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dori · 2023Dori · 2023Sampelga · 2026Dori · 2025
- Burnt area
- 9,945ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 19 Oct 2024 – 22 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 263
- in a single hotspot: 86 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 615MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,916 ha in 2023.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Dori where it started7,962 ha reached on 19 Oct3.1 %
-
1,142 ha reached on 19 Oct1.4 %
-
894 ha reached on 19 Oct1.7 %
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 Oct | 39.6 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 20 Oct | 40.3 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Oct | 39.7 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Oct | 38.9 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Oct after | 37.2 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Oct after | 38.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 26 Oct after | 38.5 °C | 13 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.7 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 28 Oct after | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 29 Oct after | 37.3 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 30 Oct after | 38.3 °C | 11 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 31 Oct after | 38.2 °C | 9 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Nov after | 37.5 °C | 8 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 20 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 263Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,890 haSampelga October 2026 · 3 days · 9 km away
- 63,851 haDori18 October 2025 · 15 days · 11 km away
- 5,649 haDori 22 October 2026 · 3 days · 13 km away
- 6,058 haSeytenga4 November 2024 · 4 days · 22 km away
- 9,785 haSeytenga15 November 2025 · 5 days · 24 km away
- 8,311 haDori24 October 2025 · 6 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dori fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 October 2024 and 22 October 2024: 4 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 9,945 hectares (99.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Dori (7,962 ha, 3.1 %); Seytenga (1,142 ha, 1.4 %); Sampelga (894 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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
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.
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
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. 263 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.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.