How long did the Karantaba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 February 2024 and 20 February 2024: 7 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 3,423 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Karantaba (3,444 ha, 7.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 2024-02-14 → 2024-02-20

Karantaba fire, 14 February 2024 Karantaba

Out · last detection 21 Feb 2024, 14:30 UTC

The fire started on 14 February 2024 in Karantaba, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,423 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Sédhiou since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 19 in Senegal in 2024, of 65.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Karantaba · 2019 Karantaba · 2023 Karantaba · 2022 Diendé · 2026

Burnt area: 3,423ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 14 Feb 2024 – 20 Feb 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 82; in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 144MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Feb20 Feb

Play back 21 Feb 2024

How it evolved, day by day

14 Feb 15 Feb 16 Feb 18 Feb 20 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

40km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,485 ha in 2019, 1,073 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2021, 1,044 ha in 2022, 1,055 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,737 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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

3,444 ha reached on 10 Feb

7.4 %

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 area0.72 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.72 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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	Danger (FWI)
14 Feb	40.6 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
15 Feb	40.0 °C	17 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Feb	40.5 °C	24 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
17 Feb	38.9 °C	26 %	22 km/h	Very high 42
18 Feb	38.8 °C	32 %	21 km/h	Very high 39
19 Feb	38.8 °C	29 %	21 km/h	Very high 40
20 Feb	37.8 °C	16 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
21 Feb after	37.1 °C	16 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Feb after	37.7 °C	15 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
23 Feb after	37.7 °C	15 %	44 km/h	Extreme 59
24 Feb after	37.8 °C	14 %	33 km/h	Extreme 51
25 Feb after	39.1 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Extreme 51
26 Feb after	39.2 °C	15 %	25 km/h	Very high 49
27 Feb after	38.5 °C	16 %	22 km/h	Extreme 51
28 Feb after	38.6 °C	20 %	23 km/h	Extreme 51
29 Feb after	39.0 °C	16 %	27 km/h	Extreme 52
1 Mar after	38.8 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Feb 2024

After · 27 Feb 2024

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 20 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 161 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 100: 6.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak161 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10400 µg/m³

Optical depth1.14

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223

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 · 82Every 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 14 February 2024 and 20 February 2024: 7 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 3,423 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Karantaba (3,444 ha, 7.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

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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. 82 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