How long did the Karantaba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 March 2022 and 14 March 2022: 12 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 6,318 hectares (63.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Karantaba (3,320 ha, 7.1 %); Simbandi Brassou (3,036 ha, 5.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SN · Senegal · 2022-03-03 → 2022-03-14

Karantaba fire, March 2022 Karantaba, Simbandi Brassou

Out · last detection 15 Mar 2022, 14:05 UTC

The fire started on 3 March 2022 in Karantaba, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,318 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in Sédhiou since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 12 in Senegal in 2022, of 90.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Karantaba · 2019 Diendé · 2026 Diendé · 2021 Diendé · 2026

Burnt area: 6,318ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 3 Mar 2022 – 14 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 3 Mar; 2022
Heat detections: 242; in a single hotspot: 107 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 176MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Mar14 Mar

Play back 15 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

3 Mar 5 Mar 7 Mar 9 Mar 11 Mar 12 Mar 14 Mar

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

41km/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

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 251 ha in 2016, 126 ha in 2017, 1,342 ha in 2019, 1,729 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,092 ha that had burned before.

19 ha Karantaba fire, February 2019 2,605 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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

Karantaba where it started

3,320 ha reached on 27 Feb

7.1 %
Simbandi Brassou

3,036 ha reached on 1 Mar

5.6 %

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	Danger (FWI)
3 Mar	38.0 °C	15 %	29 km/h	Extreme 51
4 Mar	37.1 °C	17 %	41 km/h	Extreme 57
5 Mar	36.6 °C	16 %	32 km/h	Extreme 50
6 Mar	36.0 °C	18 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
7 Mar	37.9 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
8 Mar	38.6 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
9 Mar	37.8 °C	16 %	27 km/h	Very high 50
10 Mar	37.6 °C	19 %	24 km/h	Very high 50
11 Mar	40.2 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 55
12 Mar	39.5 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Extreme 53
13 Mar	38.6 °C	26 %	32 km/h	Extreme 52
14 Mar	37.3 °C	22 %	22 km/h	Very high 46
15 Mar after	37.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
16 Mar after	35.2 °C	24 %	31 km/h	Very high 50
17 Mar after	37.1 °C	21 %	28 km/h	Very high 46
18 Mar after	38.1 °C	20 %	26 km/h	Very high 46
19 Mar after	37.0 °C	23 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
20 Mar after	35.6 °C	25 %	23 km/h	Very high 46
21 Mar after	37.6 °C	23 %	23 km/h	Very high 45
22 Mar after	39.6 °C	18 %	30 km/h	Extreme 51
23 Mar after	38.1 °C	22 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
24 Mar after	38.3 °C	21 %	23 km/h	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Feb 2022

After · 21 Mar 2022

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.

Detections table · 242Every 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

All fires in Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Karantaba fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 March 2022 and 14 March 2022: 12 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 6,318 hectares (63.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Karantaba (3,320 ha, 7.1 %); Simbandi Brassou (3,036 ha, 5.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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.

Emergency number: 18

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 18.

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. 242 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.

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