Kerouane Ctre fire, January 2020 Kerouane Ctre, Komodou, Mamouroudou
The fire started on 20 January 2020 in Kerouane Ctre, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,157 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 12th largest in Kankan since 2016 (of 388 with a page). Number 6 in Guinea in 2020, of 120.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 9,157ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 20 Jan 2020 – 6 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 20 Jan
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 359
- in a single hotspot: 144 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 332MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,438 ha in 2016, 4,512 ha in 2017, 2,474 ha in 2018, 3,396 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,820 ha that had burned before.
- 4,324 ha Kerouane Ctre fire, January 2016 12,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,772 ha Komodou fire, January 2017 3,399 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,412 ha Kerouane Ctre fire, January 2019 3,043 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,020 ha Kerouane Ctre fire, January 2017 2,548 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 356 ha Mamouroudou fire, January 2018 4,826 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 74 ha Mamouroudou fire, January 2016 2,211 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 61 ha Komodou fire, February 2019 2,719 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 40 ha Komodou fire, February 2016 2,560 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
-
Kerouane Ctre where it started4,595 ha reached on 13 Jan5.3 %
-
3,869 ha reached on 19 Jan2.6 %
-
751 ha reached on 13 Jan0.5 %
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 were about 4.2 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jan | 35.2 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 21 Jan | 35.4 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Jan | 30.6 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 2.4 mm | Low 8 |
| 23 Jan | 34.7 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 24 Jan | 34.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Jan | 35.9 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Jan | 36.1 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 27 Jan | 35.3 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 28 Jan | 34.3 °C | 16 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 29 Jan | 35.2 °C | 14 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 30 Jan | 35.4 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Jan | 35.9 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Feb | 35.3 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Feb | 35.5 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Feb | 34.6 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 4 Feb | 34.8 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Feb | 34.7 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 6 Feb | 34.4 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 7 Feb after | 35.2 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Feb after | 35.0 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Feb after | 35.2 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Feb after | 35.3 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 Feb after | 33.9 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Feb after | 34.1 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 13 Feb after | 35.6 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 14 Feb after | 35.3 °C | 12 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Feb after | 36.0 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 16 Feb after | 37.1 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
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 · 359Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,507 haKerouane Ctre7 February 2026 · 15 days · 6 km away
- 12,219 haKerouane Ctre23 January 2016 · 11 days · 8 km away
- 7,956 haMamouroudou21 January 2024 · 18 days · 24 km away
- 10,892 haMamouroudou24 February 2021 · 8 days · 26 km away
- 7,732 haMamouroudou18 February 2026 · 8 days · 32 km away
- 7,961 haMamouroudou13 February 2019 · 4 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kerouane Ctre fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 January 2020 and 6 February 2020: 18 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 9,157 hectares (91.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Kerouane Ctre (4,595 ha, 5.3 %); Komodou (3,869 ha, 2.6 %); Mamouroudou (751 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 359 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.