How long did the Kong fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 December 2017 to 21 December 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 December 2017 to 14 December 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,355 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kong (3,377 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CI · Côte d’Ivoire · 2017-12-09 → 2017-12-21

Kong fire, 9 December 2017 Kong

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2017, 13:32 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2017 in Kong, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,355 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 26 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2017, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bilimono · 2017 Parc national de la Comoé · 2016 Parc national de la Comoé · 2021

Burnt area: 3,355ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 9 Dec 2017 – 21 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 9 Dec; 2017
Heat detections: 123; in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 166MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec21 Dec

Play back 21 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Dec 12 Dec 14 Dec 18 Dec 20 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

30km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

Kong where it started

3,377 ha reached on 9 Dec

1.3 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
9 Dec	34.4 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Dec	33.2 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Dec	33.7 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Dec	34.3 °C	22 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Dec	35.9 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Dec	34.2 °C	44 %	21 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 10
15 Dec	33.8 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
16 Dec	36.0 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Dec	36.0 °C	21 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Dec	36.0 °C	21 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Dec	35.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Dec	34.7 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Dec	34.2 °C	12 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Dec after	30.5 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Dec after	32.3 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Dec after	33.2 °C	15 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Dec after	34.1 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Dec after	34.3 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Dec after	35.9 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Dec after	35.9 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Dec after	35.0 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Dec after	35.4 °C	18 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Dec after	34.3 °C	14 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Dec 2017

After · 28 Dec 2017

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 · 123Every 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 Côte d’Ivoire ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kong fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 December 2017 to 21 December 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 December 2017 to 14 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,355 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kong (3,377 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (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.

Emergency number: 180 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 180.

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 9 December 2017 to 14 December 2017. 123 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 2015, 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