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Lalgaye fire, January 2025 Lalgaye, Ouargaye

Out · last detection 31 Jan 2025, 13:21 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2025 in Lalgaye, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,664 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 55th largest in Nakambé since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 307 in Burkina Faso in 2025, of 609.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,664ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
29 Jan 2025 – 31 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
29 Jan
2025
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Energy released
201MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 Jan 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan31 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

293031

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

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,126 ha in 2017, 1,051 ha in 2022, 376 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,316 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lalgaye where it started
    1,531 ha reached on 29 Jan
    3.0 %
  2. Ouargaye
    143 ha reached on 31 Jan
    0.3 %

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 · 22 Jan 2025
After · 7 Feb 2025

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 31 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 89 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak89 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10628 µg/m³
Optical depth0.86
2728293031123
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 · 35Every 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 Burkina Faso ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lalgaye fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 January 2025 and 31 January 2025: 3 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 1,664 hectares (16.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lalgaye (1,531 ha, 3.0 %); Ouargaye (143 ha, 0.3 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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.

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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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.