How long did the Groot Henar fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 March 2024 to 10 April 2024 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 March 2024 to 10 April 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,270 hectares (52.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Groot Henar (2,966 ha, 1.3 %); Westelijke Polders (2,340 ha, 1.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

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

SR · Suriname · 2024-03-20 → 2024-04-10

Groot Henar fire, 20 March 2024 Groot Henar, Westelijke Polders

Out · last detection 10 Apr 2024, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 20 March 2024 in Groot Henar, Suriname, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,270 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Nickerie since 2016 (of 21 with a page). The largest in Suriname in 2024, of 24.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Groot Henar · 2024 East Berbice-Corentyne · 2024 Wageningen · 2024 Wageningen · 2024

Burnt area: 5,270ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 20 Mar 2024 – 10 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 20 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 320; in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start: 8; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 64MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Mar10 Apr

Play back 10 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

20 Mar 23 Mar 27 Mar 31 Mar 2 Apr 3 Apr 8 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

50km/h · peak gust

43%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 11 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

Groot Henar where it started

2,966 ha reached on 22 Mar

1.3 %
Westelijke Polders

2,340 ha reached on 20 Mar

1.9 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
22 Mar	31.5 °C	58 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 8
23 Mar	32.1 °C	53 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Mar	32.1 °C	53 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
25 Mar	32.7 °C	52 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
26 Mar	32.4 °C	55 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
27 Mar	35.0 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
28 Mar	33.8 °C	51 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 15
29 Mar	34.2 °C	47 %	27 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 7
30 Mar	34.9 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
31 Mar	34.8 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
1 Apr	34.3 °C	45 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
2 Apr	34.4 °C	46 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
3 Apr	32.5 °C	60 %	41 km/h	3.1 mm	Very low 5
4 Apr	31.0 °C	66 %	41 km/h	8.2 mm	Very low 1
5 Apr	32.0 °C	59 %	50 km/h	2.3 mm	Very low 4
6 Apr	32.5 °C	53 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
7 Apr	32.6 °C	55 %	41 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 11
8 Apr	33.2 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Apr	32.2 °C	54 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
10 Apr	31.2 °C	67 %	40 km/h	3.7 mm	Very low 3
11 Apr after	31.8 °C	61 %	44 km/h	3.0 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Mar 2024

After · 17 Apr 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 2 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 80 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak80 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM10114 µg/m³

Optical depth1.66

WHO 15

20212223242526272829303112345678910111213

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 320Every 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 Suriname ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Groot Henar fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 March 2024 to 10 April 2024 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 March 2024 to 10 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,270 hectares (52.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Groot Henar (2,966 ha, 1.3 %); Westelijke Polders (2,340 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Suriname (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: 110 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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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 110.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 March 2024 to 10 April 2024. 320 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 2025, 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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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