Karimama fire, 14 March 2023 Karimama
The fire started on 14 March 2023 in Karimama, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,033 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 508th largest in Alibori since 2016 (of 534 with a page). Number 96 in Benin in 2023, of 99.
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- Burnt area
- 1,033ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 14 Mar 2023 – 16 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 14 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 44
- in a single hotspot: 33 MW
- Average daily power
- 80MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 162 ha in 2019, 87 ha in 2020, 8 ha in 2021, 650 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 785 ha that had burned before.
- 650 ha Karimama fire, February 2022 1,204 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 124 ha Karimama fire, December 2019 7,429 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 87 ha Karimama fire, December 2020 2,074 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 37 ha Karimama fire, November 2019 5,786 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Karimama fire, February 2021 1,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Karimama where it started1,039 ha reached on 14 Mar0.2 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 44Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,140 haKarimama29 November 2021 · 8 days · 25 km away
- 13,413 haKarimama22 December 2025 · 11 days · 26 km away
- 11,904 haKarimama10 November 2017 · 17 days · 29 km away
- 9,886 haKarimama16 December 2019 · 15 days · 29 km away
- 13,889 haKarimama18 November 2017 · 16 days · 30 km away
- 11,751 haKarimama6 February 2026 · 16 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Karimama fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 March 2023 to 16 March 2023 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 March 2023 to 15 March 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,033 hectares (10.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karimama (1,039 ha, 0.2 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (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
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.
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
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 14 March 2023 to 15 March 2023. 44 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.