How long did the Lainé fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2026 to 2 February 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 January 2026 to 29 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,381 hectares (63.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Foumbadou (4,999 ha, 4.7 %); Lainé (978 ha, 2.3 %); Womey (444 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

GN · Guinea · 2026-01-15 → 2026-02-02

Lainé fire, 15 January 2026 Foumbadou, Lainé, Womey

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2026, 13:44 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2026 in Lainé, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,381 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Nzérékoré since 2016 (of 240 with a page). Number 24 in Guinea in 2026, of 269.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Foumbadou · 2017 Lainé · 2018 Foumbadou · 2021 Boola · 2026

Burnt area: 6,381ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 15 Jan 2026 – 2 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; sub-prefectures
Started on: 15 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 159; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 112MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan2 Feb

Play back 2 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 21 Jan 24 Jan 27 Jan 31 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

35km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 3 Feb.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,098 ha in 2016, 592 ha in 2017, 1,016 ha in 2018, 477 ha in 2019, 323 ha in 2020, 3,460 ha in 2021, 568 ha in 2022, 1,648 ha in 2023, 225 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,279 ha that had burned before.

149 ha Foumbadou fire, December 2017 2,745 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Foumbadou

4,999 ha reached on 17 Jan

4.7 %
Lainé where it started

978 ha reached on 15 Jan

2.3 %
Womey

444 ha reached on 25 Jan

0.9 %

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 2025

Built-up area1.9 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 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

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 Jan	31.2 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
16 Jan	32.3 °C	42 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 18
17 Jan	32.9 °C	28 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
18 Jan	32.8 °C	35 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Jan	33.4 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Jan	32.0 °C	29 %	25 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
21 Jan	32.7 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
22 Jan	30.8 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Jan	32.3 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Jan	33.0 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Jan	32.7 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Jan	33.1 °C	8 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Jan	33.4 °C	13 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Jan	33.0 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Jan	34.8 °C	16 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Jan	34.7 °C	17 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 Jan	33.7 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
1 Feb	33.6 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
2 Feb	33.5 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
3 Feb after	27.0 °C	66 %	27 km/h	4.8 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 8 Jan 2026

After · 9 Feb 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 28 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 171 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 114: 7.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak171 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM10276 µg/m³

Optical depth0.97

WHO 15

192021222324252627282930311

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 159Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lainé fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2026 to 2 February 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 January 2026 to 29 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,381 hectares (63.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Foumbadou (4,999 ha, 4.7 %); Lainé (978 ha, 2.3 %); Womey (444 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 29 January 2026 → 2 February 2026.
27 October 2026 Start date: 21 January 2026 → 15 January 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 January 2026 to 29 January 2026. 159 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned