How long did the Gouiné fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 December 2018 to 22 January 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 January 2019 to 18 January 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,503 hectares (155.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gouiné (11,049 ha, 8.0 %); Guintéguéla (4,554 ha, 3.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

CI · Côte d’Ivoire · 2018-12-25 → 2019-01-22

Gouiné fire, 25 December 2018 Gouiné, Guintéguéla

Out · last detection 23 Jan 2019, 14:10 UTC

The fire started on 25 December 2018 in Gouiné, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,503 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Montagnes since 2016 (of 123 with a page). Number 2 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2018, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gouiné · 2017 Guintéguéla · 2016 Gouiné · 2018 Gouiné · 2016

Burnt area: 15,503ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 25 Dec 2018 – 22 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 25 Dec; 2018
Heat detections: 550; in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 128MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Dec22 Jan

Play back 23 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Dec 1 Jan 5 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 14 Jan 18 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

37°high

39km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,578 ha in 2016, 9,971 ha in 2017, 2,241 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,735 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (155 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

Gouiné where it started

11,049 ha reached on 27 Dec

8.0 %
Guintéguéla

4,554 ha reached on 25 Dec

3.1 %

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)
25 Dec	33.3 °C	12 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Dec	32.8 °C	15 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
27 Dec	33.8 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Dec	33.2 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Dec	33.2 °C	29 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Dec	34.2 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Dec	35.3 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Jan	34.9 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 Jan	34.9 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
3 Jan	35.3 °C	14 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
4 Jan	35.0 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Jan	34.0 °C	14 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Jan	33.7 °C	9 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
7 Jan	34.4 °C	13 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
8 Jan	33.9 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
9 Jan	34.6 °C	16 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 Jan	35.8 °C	29 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Jan	34.3 °C	38 %	25 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
12 Jan	35.6 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Jan	36.9 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Jan	37.0 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Jan	35.9 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Jan	37.1 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Jan	37.1 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Jan	35.1 °C	44 %	33 km/h	1.0 mm	High 24
19 Jan	33.5 °C	43 %	26 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 9
20 Jan	34.3 °C	37 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
21 Jan	36.4 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
22 Jan	36.1 °C	19 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Jan after	35.6 °C	11 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Jan after	35.6 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Jan after	36.7 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Jan after	36.5 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Jan after	35.3 °C	12 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Jan after	36.1 °C	7 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Jan after	36.3 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Jan after	36.3 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
31 Jan after	36.2 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
1 Feb after	37.4 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.6 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Dec 2018

After · 29 Jan 2019

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 · 550Every 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 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 25 December 2018 to 22 January 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 January 2019 to 18 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,503 hectares (155.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gouiné (11,049 ha, 8.0 %); Guintéguéla (4,554 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Start date: 1 January 2019 → 25 December 2018.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 January 2019 to 18 January 2019. 550 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