How long did the Karantaba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 April 2025 and 6 April 2025: 6 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 2,194 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Karantaba (2,207 ha, 4.7 %).

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 · 2025-04-01 → 2025-04-06

Karantaba fire, April 2025 Karantaba

Out · last detection 6 Apr 2025, 14:43 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2025 in Karantaba, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,194 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in Sédhiou since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 93 in Senegal in 2025, of 112.

Burnt area: 2,194ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 1 Apr 2025 – 6 Apr 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Apr; 2025
Heat detections: 68; in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Energy released: 934MW; sum of detected power

Play back 6 Apr 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr6 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

123456

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

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2016, 1,435 ha in 2019, 1,120 ha in 2020, 898 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,885 ha that had burned before.

1,435 ha Karantaba fire, February 2019 2,605 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Karantaba where it started

2,207 ha reached on 31 Mar

4.7 %

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 · 25 Mar 2025

After · 13 Apr 2025

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 31 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10299 µg/m³

Optical depth0.75

WHO 15

3031123456789

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 · 68Every 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 1 April 2025 and 6 April 2025: 6 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 2,194 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Karantaba (2,207 ha, 4.7 %).
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.

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