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Guiaro fire, 14 January 2026 Guiaro, Biéha

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2026, 01:35 UTC

The fire started on 14 January 2026 in Guiaro, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 58th largest in Nazinon since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 155 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 183.

Burnt area
1,066ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
14 Jan 2026 – 15 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
14 Jan
2026
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Energy released
347MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jan15 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

1415

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

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016, 270 ha in 2019, 682 ha in 2021, 332 ha in 2022, 20 ha in 2023, 226 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 742 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Guiaro where it started
    1,017 ha reached on 14 Jan
    0.6 %
  2. 55 ha
    0.0 %

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.

Before · 7 Jan 2026
After · 22 Jan 2026

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 13 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 82 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 72: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak82 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10309 µg/m³
Optical depth0.87
12131415161718
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 · 6Every 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 14 January 2026 and 15 January 2026: 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 1,066 hectares (10.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guiaro (1,017 ha, 0.6 %); Biéha (55 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.

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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.