Guiaro fire, 20 November 2023 Guiaro, Pô
The fire started on 20 November 2023 in Guiaro, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,260 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Nazinon since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 59 in Burkina Faso in 2023, of 261.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Guiaro · 2021Guiaro · 2017Guiaro · 2019Guiaro · 2016
- Burnt area
- 2,260ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 20 Nov 2023 – 21 Nov 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 20 Nov
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 55
- in a single hotspot: 92 MW
- Average daily power
- 465MW
- detected power per day, on average
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
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 907 ha in 2016, 861 ha in 2017, 777 ha in 2019, 961 ha in 2021, 533 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,017 ha that had burned before.
- 961 ha Guiaro fire, November 2021 3,769 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 861 ha Guiaro fire, November 2017 2,130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 777 ha Guiaro fire, December 2019 1,850 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 619 ha Guiaro fire, November 2016 1,257 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 533 ha Guiaro fire, November 2022 1,154 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 287 ha Guiaro fire, November 2016 1,389 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Guiaro where it started2,271 ha reached on 20 Nov1.4 %
-
1 ha0.0 %
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 22 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 55Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,769 haGuiaro25 November 2021 · 2 days · 2 km away
- 5,225 haPôNovember 2017 · 7 days · 10 km away
- 28,109 haPôNovember 2025 · 24 days · 15 km away
- 5,051 haSissala East11 December 2016 · 7 days · 18 km away
- 3,783 haKasena Nankana West2 December 2025 · 10 days · 28 km away
- 6,564 haSissala East30 December 2025 · 6 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guiaro fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 November 2023 and 21 November 2023: 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 2,260 hectares (22.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guiaro (2,271 ha, 1.4 %); Pô (1 ha, 0.0 %).
- 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 55 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.