Kong fire, November 2020 Kong
The fire started on 20 November 2020 in Kong, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 54th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 24 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2020, of 155.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kong · 2016Kong · 2017Kong · 2017Kong · 2017
- Burnt area
- 2,409ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 20 Nov 2020 – 27 Nov 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 20 Nov
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 57
- in a single hotspot: 180 MW
- Average daily power
- 317MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 698 ha in 2016, 205 ha in 2017, 19 ha in 2018, 8 ha in 2019.
- 698 ha Kong fire, December 2016 1,428 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 89 ha Kong fire, December 2017 1,083 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 63 ha Kong fire, December 2017 3,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 53 ha Kong fire, January 2017 3,089 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 19 ha Kong fire, December 2018 2,192 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Kong fire, December 2019 3,077 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
-
Kong where it started2,425 ha reached on 20 Nov0.9 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 · 57Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kong fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 November 2020 to 27 November 2020 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 November 2020 to 25 November 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,409 hectares (24.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kong (2,425 ha, 0.9 %).
- 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
Satellite cross-check
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 November 2020 to 25 November 2020. 57 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.