Foumbadou fire, 31 December 2022 Foumbadou, Lainé
The fire started on 31 December 2022 in Foumbadou, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,247 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 164th largest in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 78 in Guinea in 2022, of 107.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lainé · 2026Lainé · 2018Boola · 2026Lainé · 2017
- Burnt area
- 2,247ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 31 Dec 2022 – 11 Jan 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 31 Dec
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 89
- in a single hotspot: 40 MW
- Average daily power
- 70MW
- 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
88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,937 ha in 2016, 596 ha in 2017, 108 ha in 2019, 6 ha in 2020, 1,289 ha in 2021, 326 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,988 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Foumbadou where it started2,027 ha reached on 1 Jan1.9 %
-
234 ha reached on 4 Jan0.6 %
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.
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 11 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 264 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 132: 8.8 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 · 89Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,381 haLainé15 January 2026 · 19 days · 1 km away
- 5,394 haLainé3 January 2018 · 29 days · 22 km away
- 6,131 haBoola12 January 2026 · 20 days · 23 km away
- 5,145 haLainé18 January 2017 · 21 days · 25 km away
- 5,156 haFoumbadou20 January 2022 · 22 days · 33 km away
- 10,511 haGueasso7 January 2026 · 27 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Foumbadou fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2022 to 11 January 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 January 2023 to 10 January 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,247 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Foumbadou (2,027 ha, 1.9 %); Lainé (234 ha, 0.6 %).
- 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
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 January 2023 → 11 January 2023.
- Start date: 6 January 2023 → 31 December 2022.
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 6 January 2023 to 10 January 2023. 89 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.