Kunike fire, 30 March 2026 Kunike, Kunike Barina
The fire started on 30 March 2026 in Kunike, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,921 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 57th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 33 in Sierra Leone in 2026, of 305.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kunike · 2016Kunike · 2023Kunike · 2017Kunike · 2018
- Burnt area
- 3,921ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 30 Mar 2026 – 6 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 30 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 80
- in a single hotspot: 151 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 228MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 10 Apr.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,790 ha in 2016, 649 ha in 2017, 321 ha in 2018, 18 ha in 2020, 820 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,575 ha that had burned before.
- 1,790 ha Kunike fire, March 2016 2,176 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 820 ha Kunike fire, March 2023 2,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 649 ha Kunike fire, March 2017 1,037 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 321 ha Kunike fire, March 2018 3,466 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 18 ha Kunike Barina fire, March 2020 1,185 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 started3,846 ha reached on 30 Mar4.8 %
-
100 ha reached on 30 Mar0.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Mar | 32.4 °C | 46 % | 30 km/h | 3.9 mm | Very low 5 |
| 31 Mar | 32.6 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 Apr | 33.4 °C | 46 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 2 Apr | 34.8 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Apr | 34.2 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Apr | 33.9 °C | 39 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 5 Apr | 35.2 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 6 Apr | 35.3 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Apr after | 34.8 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 8 Apr after | 34.9 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Apr after | 33.7 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 10 Apr after | 35.1 °C | 44 % | 20 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
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 8 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 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 · 80Every 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 Kunike fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 March 2026 and 6 April 2026: 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 3,921 hectares (39.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kunike (3,846 ha, 4.8 %); Kunike Barina (100 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 80 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.
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.