Kérou fire, 4 December 2022 Kérou
The fire started on 4 December 2022 in Kérou, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,524 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 62th largest in Atakora since 2016 (of 523 with a page). Number 14 in Benin in 2022, of 96.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kérou · 2021Kérou · 2016Kérou · 2020Kérou · 2017
- Burnt area
- 5,524ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 4 Dec 2022 – 11 Dec 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 4 Dec
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 196
- in a single hotspot: 115 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 460MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,225 ha in 2016, 1,009 ha in 2017, 32 ha in 2019, 962 ha in 2020, 1,499 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,442 ha that had burned before.
- 1,084 ha Kérou fire, November 2021 1,288 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,044 ha Kérou fire, November 2016 2,617 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 962 ha Kérou fire, November 2020 1,706 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 740 ha Kérou fire, November 2017 2,292 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 269 ha Kérou fire, November 2017 2,054 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 260 ha Kérou fire, January 2021 1,188 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 181 ha Kérou fire, December 2016 2,120 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 156 ha Kérou fire, November 2021 1,381 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
-
Kérou where it started5,563 ha reached on 4 Dec1.4 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Dec | 37.1 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 5 Dec | 36.0 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Dec | 35.0 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 7 Dec | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Dec | 34.8 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Dec | 33.9 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Dec | 33.6 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Dec | 33.3 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 12 Dec after | 34.4 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 13 Dec after | 34.9 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Dec after | 34.7 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 15 Dec after | 34.8 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 Dec after | 34.9 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 17 Dec after | 32.2 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Dec after | 33.3 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Dec after | 33.3 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 20 Dec after | 32.5 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
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 12 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 89 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 59: 3.9 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 · 196Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 19,289 haKérou5 November 2025 · 33 days · 5 km away
- 79,640 haTanguiéta14 January 2021 · 31 days · 22 km away
- 49,721 haTanguiéta24 November 2019 · 36 days · 28 km away
- 27,701 haTanguiéta15 January 2021 · 10 days · 36 km away
- 76,460 haTanguiéta5 January 2022 · 48 days · 37 km away
- 57,261 haTanguiéta24 November 2024 · 28 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kérou fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 December 2022 to 11 December 2022 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 December 2022 to 8 December 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,524 hectares (55.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kérou (5,563 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 10 December 2022 → 11 December 2022.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 December 2022 to 8 December 2022. 196 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.