Foni Bondali fire, 5 March 2023 Foni Bondali
The fire started on 5 March 2023 in Foni Bondali, Gambia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,804 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 11th largest in Brikama since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 8 in Gambia in 2023, of 24.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,804ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 5 Mar 2023 – 12 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 44
- in a single hotspot: 233 MW
- Average daily power
- 226MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,284 ha in 2018, 1,276 ha in 2019, 1,020 ha in 2021, 96 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,651 ha that had burned before.
- 1,284 ha Foni Bondali fire, March 2018 3,633 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,055 ha Foni Bondali fire, March 2019 1,263 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,020 ha Foni Bondali fire, February 2021 1,729 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 220 ha Foni Bondali fire, January 2019 1,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 96 ha Foni Bondali fire, February 2022 1,917 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Foni Bondali where it started1,815 ha reached on 5 Mar12 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 5.6 hectares of built-up land and about 1,100 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
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 10 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 208 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.1 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 · 44Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Foni Bondali fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 March 2023 to 12 March 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 March 2023 to 10 March 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,804 hectares (18.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Foni Bondali (1,815 ha, 12 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Gambia (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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 10 March 2023 → 12 March 2023.
- Start date: 8 March 2023 → 5 March 2023.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 March 2023 to 10 March 2023. 44 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.