Gueasso fire, 24 January 2020 Gueasso
The fire started on 24 January 2020 in Gueasso, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,291 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 157th largest in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 86 in Guinea in 2020, of 120.
- Burnt area
- 2,291ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 24 Jan 2020 – 27 Jan 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 24 Jan
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 71
- in a single hotspot: 58 MW
- Energy released
- 1.3GW
- sum of detected power
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
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 66 ha in 2016, 1,768 ha in 2017, 1,305 ha in 2018, 608 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,075 ha that had burned before.
- 1,624 ha Gueasso fire, February 2017 2,428 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 799 ha Gueasso fire, January 2018 2,010 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 81 ha Lainé fire, January 2017 5,145 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 63 ha Gama Berema fire, February 2017 5,422 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Gueasso where it started2,305 ha reached on 24 Jan2.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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.
Detections table · 71Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,145 haLainé23 January 2017 · 9 days · 6 km away
- 5,394 haLainé9 January 2018 · 16 days · 8 km away
- 5,422 haGama Berema1 February 2017 · 7 days · 9 km away
- 10,511 haGueasso9 January 2026 · 23 days · 20 km away
- 6,381 haLainé21 January 2026 · 9 days · 29 km away
- 5,156 haFoumbadou27 January 2022 · 8 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gueasso fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 January 2020 and 27 January 2020: 4 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,291 hectares (22.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gueasso (2,305 ha, 2.5 %).
- 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
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
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.