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Gouiné fire, 28 December 2018 Gouiné

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2019, 01:25 UTC

The fire started on 28 December 2018 in Gouiné, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Montagnes since 2016 (of 123 with a page). Number 11 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2018, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gouiné · 2017Gouiné · 2017Gouiné · 2016Gouiné · 2016

Burnt area
4,541ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
28 Dec 2018 – 9 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
28 Dec
2018
Heat detections
127
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
95MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Dec9 Jan
7 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Dec 2018 · 273 MW · 29 29 Dec 2018 · 6 MW · 5 30 Dec 2018 · 36 MW · 8 31 Dec 2018 · 109 MW · 11 1 Jan 2019 · 54 MW · 14 2 Jan 2019 · 271 MW · 30 3 Jan 2019 · 96 MW · 22 4 Jan 2019 · 5 MW · 2 7 Jan 2019 · 9 MW · 6
28 Dec 30 Dec 1 Jan 3 Jan 7 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

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,027 ha in 2016, 4,059 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,121 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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. Gouiné where it started
    4,570 ha reached on 28 Dec
    3.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Rain Danger (FWI)
28 Dec 33.5 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Dec 33.4 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Dec 34.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
31 Dec 35.1 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Jan 35.1 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jan 35.1 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jan 35.5 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jan 35.2 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Jan 34.1 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jan 33.8 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Jan 34.5 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jan 34.1 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Jan 34.8 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jan after 35.7 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Jan after 34.6 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Jan after 35.7 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jan after 37.1 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Jan after 37.3 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jan after 35.9 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jan after 37.2 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jan after 37.1 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Dec 2018
After · 16 Jan 2019

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 · 127Every 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 Côte d’Ivoire ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gouiné fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 December 2018 to 9 January 2019 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2018 to 3 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,541 hectares (45.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gouiné (4,570 ha, 3.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (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: 180 · 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: 7 January 2019 → 9 January 2019.

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.

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 180.

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 28 December 2018 to 3 January 2019. 127 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.