Skip to content
worldfires
SL · Sierra Leone · →

Kunike fire, 7 March 2020 Kunike

Out · last detection 8 Mar 2020, 14:22 UTC

The fire started on 7 March 2020 in Kunike, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,268 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 643th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 66 in Sierra Leone in 2020, of 147.

Burnt area
1,268ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
7 Mar 2020 – 8 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
1
chiefdoms
Started on
7 Mar
2020
Heat detections
39
in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Energy released
861MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Mar 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Mar8 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

78

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

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 61 ha in 2016, 565 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Kunike where it started
    1,277 ha reached on 5 Mar
    1.6 %

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.

Before · 29 Feb 2020
After · 15 Mar 2020

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 · 39Every 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 Sierra Leone ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kunike fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 March 2020 and 8 March 2020: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,268 hectares (12.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kunike (1,277 ha, 1.6 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (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

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?

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

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 (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.