How long did the Linko fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 February 2020 and 16 February 2020: 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 3,597 hectares (36.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Linko (3,621 ha, 2.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.

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 · 2020-02-10 → 2020-02-16

Linko fire, February 2020 Linko

Out · last detection 16 Feb 2020, 14:16 UTC

The fire started on 10 February 2020 in Linko, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,597 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 90th largest in Kankan since 2016 (of 388 with a page). Number 30 in Guinea in 2020, of 120.

Burnt area: 3,597ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 10 Feb 2020 – 16 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 10 Feb; 2020
Heat detections: 98; in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 193MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 16 Feb 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Feb16 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

10 Feb 11 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 15 Feb 16 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

39km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 647 ha in 2016, 1,185 ha in 2017, 1,678 ha in 2018, 2,145 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,560 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Linko where it started

3,621 ha reached on 10 Feb

2.3 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
10 Feb	35.1 °C	19 %	35 km/h	Very high 47
11 Feb	33.5 °C	24 %	32 km/h	Very high 42
12 Feb	33.8 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
13 Feb	35.4 °C	12 %	36 km/h	Very high 49
14 Feb	35.0 °C	11 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
15 Feb	35.7 °C	9 %	29 km/h	Very high 47
16 Feb	37.0 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 54
17 Feb after	37.3 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
18 Feb after	36.6 °C	22 %	25 km/h	Very high 47
19 Feb after	37.5 °C	22 %	26 km/h	Very high 46
20 Feb after	37.0 °C	27 %	25 km/h	Very high 43
21 Feb after	36.9 °C	29 %	35 km/h	Very high 41
22 Feb after	37.6 °C	25 %	27 km/h	Very high 41
23 Feb after	37.5 °C	21 %	27 km/h	Very high 44
24 Feb after	39.0 °C	11 %	39 km/h	Extreme 52
25 Feb after	37.5 °C	10 %	45 km/h	Extreme 57
26 Feb after	37.9 °C	10 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Feb 2020

After · 23 Feb 2020

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.

Detections table · 98Every 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 Linko fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 February 2020 and 16 February 2020: 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 3,597 hectares (36.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Linko (3,621 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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 ↗

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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. 98 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.

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