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Guinguan fire, March 2020 Guinguan

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2020, 14:55 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2020 in Guinguan, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,480 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 47th largest in Boké since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 33 in Guinea in 2020, of 120.

Burnt area
3,480ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
13 Mar 2020 – 17 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
13 Mar
2020
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
675MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Mar 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar17 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1314151617

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
38km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 828 ha in 2016, 647 ha in 2018, 200 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,300 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Guinguan where it started
    3,501 ha reached on 11 Mar
    2.9 %

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)
13 Mar 39.4 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Mar 39.6 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Mar 38.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Mar 38.7 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Mar 39.3 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Mar after 38.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Mar after 37.6 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Mar after 40.5 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Mar after 39.5 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Mar after 39.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Mar after 37.7 °C 20 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Mar after 36.2 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Mar after 36.8 °C 27 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Mar after 37.4 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Mar after 38.0 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2020
After · 24 Mar 2020

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 · 105Every 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 Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guinguan fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2020 and 17 March 2020: 5 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 3,480 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guinguan (3,501 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
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

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.