Lower Banta fire, 21 March 2026 Bagruwa, Lower Banta
The fire started on 21 March 2026 in Lower Banta, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,099 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 38th largest in Southern since 2016 (of 393 with a page). Number 52 in Sierra Leone in 2026, of 305.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,099ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 21 Mar 2026 – 8 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 21 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 76
- in a single hotspot: 136 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 202MW
- 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: 1.5 mm on 10 Apr.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 653 ha in 2016, 1,746 ha in 2017, 757 ha in 2021, 388 ha in 2022, 364 ha in 2023, 1,207 ha in 2024, 960 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,871 ha that had burned before.
- 1,746 ha Bagruwa fire, April 2017 3,579 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,207 ha Bagruwa fire, March 2024 2,637 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 960 ha Bagruwa fire, March 2025 1,640 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 757 ha Bagruwa fire, March 2021 1,237 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 653 ha Lower Banta fire, March 2016 1,182 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 388 ha Bagruwa fire, April 2022 1,016 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 364 ha Lower Banta fire, April 2023 1,822 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
-
2,304 ha reached on 16 Mar2.8 %
-
Lower Banta where it started814 ha reached on 15 Mar1.6 %
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 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 450 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Mar | 35.0 °C | 47 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 22 Mar | 34.9 °C | 51 % | 33 km/h | 0.7 mm | Low 9 |
| 23 Mar | 32.5 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 24 Mar | 33.4 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 25 Mar | 33.7 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 26 Mar | 34.5 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 27 Mar | 32.8 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 28 Mar | 34.5 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 29 Mar | 35.7 °C | 43 % | 33 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 30 Mar | 33.6 °C | 49 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 31 Mar | 33.6 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 1 Apr | 35.0 °C | 49 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 2 Apr | 34.5 °C | 47 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 3 Apr | 34.3 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 4 Apr | 33.8 °C | 49 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 5 Apr | 34.4 °C | 43 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 6 Apr | 35.2 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 7 Apr | 34.0 °C | 50 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 8 Apr | 35.7 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 9 Apr after | 34.2 °C | 56 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 10 Apr after | 35.4 °C | 49 % | 28 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 11 |
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 81 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 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 · 76Every 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 Lower Banta fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2026 and 8 April 2026: 19 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 3,099 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bagruwa (2,304 ha, 2.8 %); Lower Banta (814 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
- 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 76 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.
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.