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ML · Mali · –

Kéwa fire, 23 March 2021 Kéwa

Out · last detection 1 Apr 2021, 12:49 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2021 in Kéwa, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,461 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Mopti since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 8 in Mali in 2021, of 58.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kéwa · 2022Kéwa · 2022Derrary · 2021Pondori · 2019

Burnt area
5,461ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
23 Mar 2021 – 1 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
23 Mar
2021
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
141MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar1 Apr
1 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

23 Mar 2021 · 6 MW · 2 24 Mar 2021 · 51 MW · 7 25 Mar 2021 · 1 MW · 1 26 Mar 2021 · 51 MW · 8 28 Mar 2021 · 107 MW · 9 29 Mar 2021 · 308 MW · 18 30 Mar 2021 · 57 MW · 13 31 Mar 2021 · 643 MW · 86 1 Apr 2021 · 45 MW · 13
23 Mar 25 Mar 28 Mar 31 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high
49km/h · peak gust
4%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,833 ha in 2019, 1,788 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,924 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (55 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Kéwa where it started
    5,493 ha reached on 23 Mar
    5.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.2 ha
Residents≈ 600

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.2 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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)
23 Mar 40.4 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Mar 41.4 °C 6 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
25 Mar 40.4 °C 6 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
26 Mar 39.3 °C 6 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
27 Mar 40.1 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
28 Mar 39.4 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
29 Mar 38.5 °C 4 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
30 Mar 39.1 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
31 Mar 39.7 °C 5 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
1 Apr 40.0 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
2 Apr after 40.4 °C 5 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
3 Apr after 39.9 °C 6 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
4 Apr after 41.0 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
5 Apr after 42.4 °C 5 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Apr after 42.8 °C 4 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
7 Apr after 43.0 °C 3 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
8 Apr after 42.5 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
9 Apr after 42.8 °C 6 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
10 Apr after 43.9 °C 4 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
11 Apr after 43.6 °C 6 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 16 Mar 2021
After · 8 Apr 2021

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 · 157Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mali

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kéwa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2021 to 1 April 2021 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 March 2021 to 1 April 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,461 hectares (54.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kéwa (5,493 ha, 5.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (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.
  1. Start date: 28 March 2021 → 23 March 2021.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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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 28 March 2021 to 1 April 2021. 157 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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 International (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.