Guiaro fire, 17 November 2022 Guiaro
The fire started on 17 November 2022 in Guiaro, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,154 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 50th largest in Nazinon since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 88 in Burkina Faso in 2022, of 109.
The power measured by the satellite is low (22.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,154ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 17 Nov 2022 – 18 Nov 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 17 Nov
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 20
- in a single hotspot: 23 MW
- Energy released
- 197MW
- 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
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2016, 400 ha in 2017, 649 ha in 2019, 669 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,075 ha that had burned before.
- 669 ha Guiaro fire, November 2021 3,769 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 649 ha Guiaro fire, December 2019 1,850 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 400 ha Guiaro fire, November 2017 2,130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Guiaro fire, November 2016 1,389 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Guiaro where it started1,160 ha reached on 17 Nov0.7 %
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 · 20Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,225 haPôNovember 2017 · 7 days · 12 km away
- 5,051 haSissala East11 December 2016 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 28,109 haPôNovember 2025 · 24 days · 18 km away
- 3,783 haKasena Nankana West2 December 2025 · 10 days · 28 km away
- 6,564 haSissala East30 December 2025 · 6 days · 33 km away
- 11,599 haBiéha5 January 2026 · 15 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guiaro fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2022 and 18 November 2022: 2 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 1,154 hectares (11.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Guiaro (1,160 ha, 0.7 %).
- 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.
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 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.