How long did the Foumbadou fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 January 2021 to 25 January 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 January 2021 to 20 January 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,616 hectares (46.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Foumbadou (2,395 ha, 2.2 %); Boola (2,250 ha, 2.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

GN · Guinea · 2021-01-06 → 2021-01-25

Foumbadou fire, 6 January 2021 Foumbadou, Boola

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2021, 13:25 UTC

The fire started on 6 January 2021 in Foumbadou, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,616 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 17 in Guinea in 2021, of 113.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Boola · 2026 Foumbadou · 2026 Lainé · 2026 Foumbadou · 2022

Burnt area: 4,616ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 6 Jan 2021 – 25 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 6 Jan; 2021
Heat detections: 117; in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start: 14; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 93MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jan25 Jan

Play back 25 Jan 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jan 12 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 19 Jan 23 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

32km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 123 ha in 2016, 886 ha in 2017, 1,092 ha in 2018, 206 ha in 2019, 470 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,575 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Foumbadou where it started

2,395 ha reached on 6 Jan

2.2 %
Boola

2,250 ha reached on 7 Jan

2.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area3.0 ha

Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and about 500 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
13 Jan	31.9 °C	38 %	23 km/h	Moderate 14
14 Jan	33.0 °C	28 %	23 km/h	Moderate 17
15 Jan	33.3 °C	24 %	21 km/h	Moderate 18
16 Jan	31.8 °C	21 %	24 km/h	Moderate 20
17 Jan	32.8 °C	14 %	32 km/h	High 26
18 Jan	33.3 °C	15 %	28 km/h	High 28
19 Jan	34.5 °C	21 %	24 km/h	High 26
20 Jan	33.7 °C	26 %	25 km/h	High 26
21 Jan	33.4 °C	23 %	31 km/h	High 29
22 Jan	34.4 °C	14 %	25 km/h	High 28
23 Jan	33.6 °C	14 %	26 km/h	High 30
24 Jan	34.0 °C	13 %	25 km/h	High 30
25 Jan	34.5 °C	15 %	23 km/h	High 31
26 Jan after	35.3 °C	17 %	26 km/h	High 33
27 Jan after	35.5 °C	20 %	24 km/h	High 33
28 Jan after	34.2 °C	30 %	24 km/h	High 28
29 Jan after	33.7 °C	32 %	31 km/h	High 27
30 Jan after	34.7 °C	25 %	26 km/h	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Dec 2020

After · 1 Feb 2021

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.

Detections table · 117Every 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 ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Foumbadou fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 January 2021 to 25 January 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 January 2021 to 20 January 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,616 hectares (46.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Foumbadou (2,395 ha, 2.2 %); Boola (2,250 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 20 January 2021 → 25 January 2021.
27 October 2026 Start date: 13 January 2021 → 6 January 2021.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 January 2021 to 20 January 2021. 117 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned