Karimama fire, 16 November 2024 Karimama
The fire started on 16 November 2024 in Karimama, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,014 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 523th largest in Alibori since 2016 (of 534 with a page). Number 85 in Benin in 2024, of 86.
- Burnt area
- 1,014ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 16 Nov 2024 – 16 Nov 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 16 Nov
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 71 MW
- Average daily power
- 507MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
16 Nov 2024 · 507 MW · 23
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 44 ha in 2016, 332 ha in 2019, 749 ha in 2021, 178 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 803 ha that had burned before.
- 607 ha Karimama fire, February 2021 9,688 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 332 ha Karimama fire, November 2019 3,060 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 178 ha Karimama fire, January 2023 4,583 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 142 ha Karimama fire, November 2021 2,209 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 44 ha Karimama fire, December 2016 5,541 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Karimama where it started1,021 ha reached on 16 Nov0.2 %
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 19 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,413 haKarimama22 December 2025 · 11 days · 10 km away
- 13,889 haKarimama18 November 2017 · 16 days · 12 km away
- 9,886 haKarimama16 December 2019 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 13,713 haKarimama3 December 2025 · 17 days · 20 km away
- 11,751 haKarimama6 February 2026 · 16 days · 34 km away
- 15,140 haKarimama29 November 2021 · 8 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Karimama fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 November 2024 and 16 November 2024: 1 day 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 1,014 hectares (10.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karimama (1,021 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
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
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.