Foni Bondali fire, April 2025 Foni Bondali, Foni Kansala
The fire started on 9 April 2025 in Foni Bondali, Gambia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,588 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 14th largest in Brikama since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 7 in Gambia in 2025, of 18.
- Burnt area
- 1,588ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 9 Apr 2025 – 10 Apr 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 9 Apr
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 40
- in a single hotspot: 42 MW
- Energy released
- 511MW
- sum of detected power
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
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,189 ha in 2017, 19 ha in 2018, 1,095 ha in 2021, 889 ha in 2022, 994 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,515 ha that had burned before.
- 1,189 ha Foni Kansala fire, February 2017 2,565 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,094 ha Foni Bondali fire, March 2021 1,340 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 994 ha Foni Kansala fire, March 2023 2,343 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 889 ha Foni Kansala fire, March 2022 1,432 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 19 ha Foni Bondali fire, March 2018 3,633 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Foni Bondali where it started1,222 ha reached on 9 Apr7.8 %
-
376 ha reached on 10 Apr1.9 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 7 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 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 · 40Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,630 haKiang West16 January 2026 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 10,788 haKiang West10 February 2022 · 5 days · 16 km away
- 12,864 haBonaMarch 2023 · 12 days · 18 km away
- 25,642 haBonaFebruary 2026 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 7,769 haBonaJanuary 2026 · 7 days · 29 km away
- 12,988 haSindian12 February 2026 · 10 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Foni Bondali fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 April 2025 and 10 April 2025: 2 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 1,588 hectares (15.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Foni Bondali (1,222 ha, 7.8 %); Foni Kansala (376 ha, 1.9 %).
- 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
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
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.