Kunike fire, 30 March 2026 Kunike, Kafe Simiria, Sambaya
The fire started on 30 March 2026 in Kunike, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,956 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 229th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 90 in Sierra Leone in 2026, of 305.
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- Burnt area
- 1,956ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 30 Mar 2026 – 5 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 30 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 21
- in a single hotspot: 73 MW
- Average daily power
- 60MW
- 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
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 142 ha in 2017, 582 ha in 2018, 168 ha in 2019, 18 ha in 2020, 623 ha in 2022, 28 ha in 2023, 891 ha in 2024, 16 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,686 ha that had burned before.
- 623 ha Sambaya fire, March 2022 7,753 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 582 ha Kunike fire, March 2018 2,658 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 448 ha Kafe Simiria fire, April 2024 1,282 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 443 ha Nieni fire, April 2024 3,922 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 168 ha Sambaya fire, March 2019 1,373 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 142 ha Kafe Simiria fire, April 2017 1,678 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha Kunike fire, March 2023 2,065 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 18 ha Kunike fire, March 2020 2,356 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 started788 ha reached on 30 Mar1.0 %
-
649 ha reached on 31 Mar1.1 %
-
489 ha reached on 31 Mar0.7 %
-
42 ha0.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.95 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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
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 4 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 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 · 21Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,753 haSambaya16 March 2022 · 8 days · 2 km away
- 9,579 haNieni8 March 2022 · 16 days · 16 km away
- 11,897 haKunike28 March 2026 · 11 days · 18 km away
- 6,826 haSandor26 March 2016 · 15 days · 29 km away
- 24,116 haSandor27 February 2019 · 22 days · 34 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 30 March 2026 and 5 April 2026: 7 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 1,956 hectares (19.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Kunike (788 ha, 1.0 %); Kafe Simiria (649 ha, 1.1 %); Sambaya (489 ha, 0.7 %); Nieni (42 ha, 0.0 %).
- 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. 21 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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.