Kunike fire, 15 March 2020 Kunike
The fire started on 15 March 2020 in Kunike, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,593 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 66th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 3 in Sierra Leone in 2020, of 147.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kunike · 2019Kunike · 2017Kunike · 2018Kunike · 2019
- Burnt area
- 3,593ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 15 Mar 2020 – 22 Mar 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 15 Mar
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 125
- in a single hotspot: 257 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 658MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 25 Mar.
This area had burned before
40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 32 ha in 2016, 513 ha in 2017, 163 ha in 2018, 755 ha in 2019.
- 598 ha Kunike fire, March 2019 1,607 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 513 ha Kunike fire, March 2017 2,228 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 163 ha Kunike fire, March 2018 1,295 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 156 ha Kunike fire, March 2019 3,703 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 32 ha Kunike fire, April 2016 2,775 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
-
Kunike where it started3,616 ha reached on 14 Mar4.5 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 900 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Mar | 34.5 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 16 Mar | 35.2 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Mar | 37.4 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Mar | 34.8 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 19 Mar | 36.2 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Mar | 38.3 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Mar | 37.0 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 22 Mar | 37.2 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Mar after | 31.4 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 24 Mar after | 32.8 °C | 47 % | 30 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 25 Mar after | 33.1 °C | 45 % | 22 km/h | 1.9 mm | Low 10 |
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 · 125Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,897 haKunike28 March 2026 · 11 days · 7 km away
- 7,753 haSambaya16 March 2022 · 8 days · 14 km away
- 6,826 haSandor26 March 2016 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 9,579 haNieni8 March 2022 · 16 days · 24 km away
- 24,116 haSandor27 February 2019 · 22 days · 25 km away
- 6,232 haNieni4 March 2019 · 17 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kunike fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 March 2020 and 22 March 2020: 8 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 3,593 hectares (35.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kunike (3,616 ha, 4.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
- 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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 125 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.
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.