How long did the Gueasso fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2026 and 31 January 2026: 23 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 10,511 hectares (105.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gueasso (9,434 ha, 10 %); Foumbadou (1,145 ha, 1.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.

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.

GN · Guinea · 2026-01-09 → 2026-01-31

Gueasso fire, 9 January 2026 Gueasso, Foumbadou

Out · last detection 1 Feb 2026, 01:18 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2026 in Gueasso, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,511 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 5 in Guinea in 2026, of 269.

Burnt area: 10,511ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 9 Jan 2026 – 31 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 9 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 403; in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 3.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Feb 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan31 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

9101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311

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

35km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 2 Feb.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,098 ha in 2016, 1,052 ha in 2017, 4,480 ha in 2018, 1,446 ha in 2019, 2,545 ha in 2020, 725 ha in 2022, 292 ha in 2023, 4,181 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,142 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Gueasso where it started

9,434 ha reached on 7 Jan

10 %
Foumbadou

1,145 ha reached on 14 Jan

1.1 %

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.

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)
9 Jan	33.9 °C	20 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
10 Jan	33.8 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
11 Jan	33.8 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
12 Jan	33.4 °C	32 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
13 Jan	32.4 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
14 Jan	32.9 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
15 Jan	32.2 °C	42 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
16 Jan	33.7 °C	41 %	31 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 7
17 Jan	34.0 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 Jan	33.8 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
19 Jan	33.2 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 21
20 Jan	32.9 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
21 Jan	33.6 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Jan	32.3 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
23 Jan	33.9 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Jan	34.2 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Jan	34.1 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Jan	34.1 °C	5 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Jan	34.4 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Jan	34.0 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Jan	35.7 °C	17 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Jan	35.4 °C	19 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Jan	34.4 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 Feb after	34.7 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Feb after	34.7 °C	39 %	30 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Jan 2026

After · 7 Feb 2026

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 28 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 102 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 69: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak102 µg/m³

Days over the guideline28 days

PM10293 µg/m³

Optical depth0.88

WHO 15

78910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 403Every 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 Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gueasso fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2026 and 31 January 2026: 23 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 10,511 hectares (105.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gueasso (9,434 ha, 10 %); Foumbadou (1,145 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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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