Karimama fire, March 2024 Karimama
The fire started on 2 March 2024 in Karimama, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,634 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 245th largest in Alibori since 2016 (of 534 with a page). Number 47 in Benin in 2024, of 86.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,634ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 2 Mar 2024 – 8 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 2 Mar
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 42
- in a single hotspot: 19 MW
- Average daily power
- 41MW
- 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
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 512 ha in 2016, 415 ha in 2017, 1,374 ha in 2019, 1,048 ha in 2021, 312 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,620 ha that had burned before.
- 1,088 ha Karimama fire, December 2019 7,134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 731 ha Karimama fire, January 2021 2,057 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 512 ha Karimama fire, February 2016 2,524 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 346 ha Karimama fire, December 2017 1,527 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 302 ha Karimama fire, December 2021 1,247 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 285 ha Karimama fire, March 2019 1,306 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 160 ha Karimama fire, December 2022 1,034 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 153 ha Karimama fire, January 2022 2,326 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 started1,644 ha reached on 2 Mar0.3 %
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.
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 · CopernicusOn 1 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 193 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 97: 6.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 42Every 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 · 31 km away
- 12,978 haDiapaga19 November 2025 · 12 days · 31 km away
- 13,413 haKarimama22 December 2025 · 11 days · 34 km away
- 11,904 haKarimama10 November 2017 · 17 days · 36 km away
- 9,886 haKarimama16 December 2019 · 15 days · 38 km away
- 13,889 haKarimama18 November 2017 · 16 days · 39 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 2 March 2024 to 8 March 2024 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 March 2024 to 6 March 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,634 hectares (16.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karimama (1,644 ha, 0.3 %).
- 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
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 2 March 2024 to 6 March 2024. 42 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.