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SN · Senegal · –

Fongolembi fire, November 2025 Fongolembi, Bandafassi

Out · last detection 27 Nov 2025, 14:40 UTC

The fire started on 22 November 2025 in Fongolembi, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,626 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 16 in Senegal in 2025, of 67.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balaki · 2026Bembou · 2022

Burnt area
3,626ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
22 Nov 2025 – 28 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
22 Nov
2025
Heat detections
48
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
83MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Nov28 Nov
27 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 Nov 2025 · 31 MW · 4 23 Nov 2025 · 66 MW · 7 24 Nov 2025 · 174 MW · 18 25 Nov 2025 · 8 MW · 9 26 Nov 2025 · 215 MW · 9 27 Nov 2025 · 4 MW · 1
22 Nov 24 Nov 26 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
37km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,026 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 969 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Fongolembi where it started
    3,570 ha reached on 22 Nov
    2.7 %
  2. 53 ha
    0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Nov 34.8 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Nov 32.5 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Nov 32.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Nov 30.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Nov 32.2 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Nov 34.1 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Nov 33.8 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Nov after 34.1 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Nov after 33.7 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Dec after 32.6 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Dec after 29.9 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Dec after 30.6 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Dec after 31.2 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Dec after 30.7 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Dec after 33.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Dec after 28.8 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Dec after 31.6 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Nov 2025
After · 5 Dec 2025

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 26 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 79 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak79 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10192 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
20 Nov22 Nov24 Nov26 Nov28 Nov
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 · 48Every 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 Fongolembi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 November 2025 to 28 November 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2025 to 26 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,626 hectares (36.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Fongolembi (3,570 ha, 2.7 %); Bandafassi (53 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 26 November 2025 → 28 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 November 2025 to 26 November 2025. 48 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.