How long did the Kakony fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2026 to 30 April 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 April 2026 to 24 April 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,277 hectares (32.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kakony (3,296 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

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.

GN · Guinea · 2026-04-07 → 2026-04-30

Kakony fire, 7 April 2026 Kakony

Out · last detection 28 Apr 2026, 14:13 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2026 in Kakony, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,277 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Boké since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 88 in Guinea in 2026, of 269.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kakony · 2016 Koba · 2017

Burnt area: 3,277ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 7 Apr 2026 – 30 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 7 Apr; 2026
Heat detections: 89; in a single hotspot: 181 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 122MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr30 Apr

Play back 28 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 12 Apr 16 Apr 19 Apr 22 Apr 28 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

40km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 3 May.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 929 ha in 2016, 337 ha in 2018, 15 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,079 ha that had burned before.

12 ha Kakony fire, April 2016 3,433 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Kakony where it started

3,296 ha reached on 7 Apr

2.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area4.0 ha

Residents≈ 800

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.0 hectares of built-up land and about 800 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
7 Apr	35.5 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Apr	35.0 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Apr	33.9 °C	28 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Apr	34.7 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Apr	33.1 °C	34 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Apr	34.9 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Apr	34.7 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Apr	34.4 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Apr	35.0 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Apr	35.8 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Apr	34.5 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Apr	35.7 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Apr	35.1 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Apr	35.4 °C	25 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Apr	34.0 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Apr	34.9 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
23 Apr	34.0 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Apr	34.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Apr	35.6 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
26 Apr	33.9 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Apr	33.6 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Apr	33.3 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Apr	32.8 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Apr	35.3 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
1 May after	36.3 °C	27 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 May after	35.7 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 May after	33.2 °C	45 %	35 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Mar 2026

After · 7 May 2026

Before After

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 21 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 109 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak109 µg/m³

Days over the guideline29 days

PM10221 µg/m³

Optical depth0.87

WHO 15

56789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930123

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 · 89Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

12,262 haKoba13 April 2017 · 18 days · 29 km away

All fires in Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kakony fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2026 to 30 April 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 April 2026 to 24 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,277 hectares (32.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kakony (3,296 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 April 2026 to 24 April 2026. 89 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned