Kasunko fire, 24 April 2024 Kasunko
The fire started on 24 April 2024 in Kasunko, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,200 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 740th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 80 in Sierra Leone in 2024, of 140.
The power measured by the satellite is low (23.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,200ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 24 Apr 2024 – 27 Apr 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 24 Apr
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Energy released
- 272MW
- sum of detected power
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
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 146 ha in 2016, 603 ha in 2017, 791 ha in 2018, 991 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,142 ha that had burned before.
- 985 ha Kasunko fire, January 2019 4,768 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 791 ha Kasunko fire, January 2018 2,092 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 457 ha Kasunko fire, January 2017 3,908 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 146 ha Wara Wara Bafod fire, January 2016 3,353 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 145 ha Kasunko fire, February 2017 4,443 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Kasunko fire, April 2019 1,384 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Kasunko where it started1,208 ha reached on 24 Apr1.3 %
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 22 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 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
- 6,058 haKasunko24 January 2026 · 5 days · 4 km away
- 4,768 haKasunkoJanuary 2019 · 9 days · 4 km away
- 4,443 haKasunko3 February 2017 · 7 days · 5 km away
- 4,232 haTambakha31 January 2017 · 8 days · 13 km away
- 8,119 haTambakha26 January 2016 · 10 days · 22 km away
- 4,462 haTambakha29 January 2016 · 5 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kasunko fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 April 2024 and 27 April 2024: 4 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 1,200 hectares (12.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kasunko (1,208 ha, 1.3 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.