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BF · Burkina Faso · →

Guiaro fire, 3 December 2021 Guiaro

Out · last detection 6 Dec 2021, 13:21 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2021 in Guiaro, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,044 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 59th largest in Nazinon since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 135 in Burkina Faso in 2021, of 141.

Burnt area
1,044ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
3 Dec 2021 – 6 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
3 Dec
2021
Heat detections
23
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Energy released
560MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Dec 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec6 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

346

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

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16 ha in 2016, 691 ha in 2017, 606 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 859 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Guiaro where it started
    1,050 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.6 %

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.

Before · 26 Nov 2021
After · 13 Dec 2021

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 · 23Every 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 Burkina Faso ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guiaro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 December 2021 and 6 December 2021: 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 1,044 hectares (10.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guiaro (1,050 ha, 0.6 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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.

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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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.