Kong fire, 13 January 2026 Kong, Sikolo
The fire started on 13 January 2026 in Kong, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,019 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 266th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 276 with a page). Number 131 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2026, of 136.
The power measured by the satellite is low (24.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kong · 2024Kong · 2019Kong · 2025Kong · 2021
- Burnt area
- 1,019ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 13 Jan 2026 – 16 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 13 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Average daily power
- 70MW
- 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
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 485 ha in 2019, 340 ha in 2021, 2 ha in 2022, 542 ha in 2024, 229 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 891 ha that had burned before.
- 542 ha Kong fire, December 2024 1,727 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 485 ha Kong fire, December 2019 1,215 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 229 ha Kong fire, December 2025 8,667 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 152 ha Kong fire, December 2021 1,054 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 97 ha Kong fire, December 2021 1,351 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Sikolo fire, December 2021 1,104 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Kong fire, November 2022 1,963 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 started997 ha reached on 13 Jan0.4 %
-
28 ha reached on 13 Jan0.0 %
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.
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 13 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 105 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 94: 6.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 22Every 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 13 January 2026 to 16 January 2026 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2026 to 16 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,019 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kong (997 ha, 0.4 %); Sikolo (28 ha, 0.0 %).
- 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
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 January 2026 to 16 January 2026. 22 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.