How long did the Farim fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2024 to 7 March 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 February 2024 to 7 March 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,821 hectares (28.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Farim (1,554 ha, 1.0 %); Mansabá (1,285 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

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

GW · Guinea-Bissau · 2024-02-23 → 2024-03-07

Farim fire, 23 February 2024 Farim, Mansabá

Out · last detection 7 Mar 2024, 02:01 UTC

The fire started on 23 February 2024 in Farim, Guinea-Bissau, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,821 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Oio since 2016 (of 57 with a page). Number 2 in Guinea-Bissau in 2024, of 28.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Farim · 2020 Farim · 2026 Farim · 2026 Contuboel · 2024

Burnt area: 2,821ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 23 Feb 2024 – 7 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; sectors
Started on: 23 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 78; in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 67MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Feb7 Mar

Play back 7 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

26 Feb 28 Feb 1 Mar 3 Mar 5 Mar 6 Mar 7 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

44km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 918 ha in 2020.

918 ha Farim fire, March 2020 1,293 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

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

Farim where it started

1,554 ha reached on 26 Feb

1.0 %
Mansabá

1,285 ha reached on 1 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 2025

Built-up area2.8 ha

Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 500 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)
23 Feb	38.3 °C	13 %	44 km/h	Extreme 59
24 Feb	38.7 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 54
25 Feb	40.1 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Extreme 53
26 Feb	40.1 °C	12 %	26 km/h	Extreme 51
27 Feb	39.4 °C	14 %	22 km/h	Extreme 51
28 Feb	39.6 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Extreme 52
29 Feb	40.1 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Extreme 56
1 Mar	39.7 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Extreme 54
2 Mar	39.1 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Extreme 54
3 Mar	40.1 °C	12 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
4 Mar	39.6 °C	15 %	28 km/h	Extreme 55
5 Mar	41.2 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Extreme 54
6 Mar	40.8 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
7 Mar	38.8 °C	18 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
8 Mar after	36.6 °C	28 %	25 km/h	Very high 45
9 Mar after	38.1 °C	26 %	23 km/h	Very high 45
10 Mar after	40.1 °C	18 %	28 km/h	Extreme 50
11 Mar after	41.8 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
12 Mar after	42.1 °C	16 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55
13 Mar after	41.3 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Extreme 52
14 Mar after	40.5 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Extreme 50
15 Mar after	40.6 °C	26 %	22 km/h	Very high 47
16 Mar after	42.7 °C	17 %	29 km/h	Very high 49
17 Mar after	41.3 °C	20 %	27 km/h	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Feb 2024

After · 14 Mar 2024

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 23 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 90: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³

Days over the guideline19 days

PM10277 µg/m³

Optical depth0.79

WHO 15

21222324252627282912345678910

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 · 78Every 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 Guinea-Bissau ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Farim fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2024 to 7 March 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 February 2024 to 7 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,821 hectares (28.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Farim (1,554 ha, 1.0 %); Mansabá (1,285 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea-Bissau (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.

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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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 26 February 2024 to 7 March 2024. 78 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 ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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