How long did the Komodou fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2019 to 7 March 2019 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 February 2019 to 5 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,361 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Komodou (4,761 ha, 3.2 %); Mamouroudou (362 ha, 0.2 %); Tinti Oulen (274 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.

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.

GN · Guinea · 2019-02-23 → 2019-03-07

Komodou fire, 23 February 2019 Komodou, Mamouroudou, Tinti Oulen

Out · last detection 6 Mar 2019, 14:23 UTC

The fire started on 23 February 2019 in Komodou, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,361 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 45th largest in Kankan since 2016 (of 388 with a page). Number 14 in Guinea in 2019, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mamouroudou · 2021 Mamouroudou · 2019 Mamouroudou · 2026 Mamouroudou · 2021

Burnt area: 5,361ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 23 Feb 2019 – 7 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; sub-prefectures
Started on: 23 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 169; in a single hotspot: 174 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 353MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Feb7 Mar

Play back 6 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Feb 26 Feb 1 Mar 3 Mar 5 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

37°high

30km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 553 ha in 2016, 3,485 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,412 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

Komodou where it started

4,761 ha reached on 23 Feb

3.2 %
Mamouroudou

362 ha reached on 27 Feb

0.2 %
Tinti Oulen

274 ha reached on 27 Feb

0.1 %

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 area0.20 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.20 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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)
25 Feb	36.3 °C	11 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
26 Feb	35.8 °C	9 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
27 Feb	34.5 °C	8 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
28 Feb	31.8 °C	10 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Mar	34.2 °C	10 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Mar	34.5 °C	7 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Mar	35.2 °C	6 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
4 Mar	36.8 °C	7 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
5 Mar	37.2 °C	10 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
6 Mar	38.5 °C	8 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
7 Mar	39.0 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Mar after	38.0 °C	13 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
9 Mar after	36.7 °C	9 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
10 Mar after	36.0 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
11 Mar after	36.7 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Mar after	37.7 °C	10 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 52
13 Mar after	38.2 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
14 Mar after	38.1 °C	9 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
15 Mar after	38.5 °C	8 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Feb 2019

After · 14 Mar 2019

Before After

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 · 169Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Komodou fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2019 to 7 March 2019 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 February 2019 to 5 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,361 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Komodou (4,761 ha, 3.2 %); Mamouroudou (362 ha, 0.2 %); Tinti Oulen (274 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 March 2019 → 7 March 2019.
27 October 2026 Start date: 25 February 2019 → 23 February 2019.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 February 2019 to 5 March 2019. 169 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 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.

Where it burned