Manfran fire, 18 January 2021 Manfran
The fire started on 18 January 2021 in Manfran, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,392 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 139th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 74 in Guinea in 2021, of 111.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,392ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 18 Jan 2021 – 21 Jan 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 18 Jan
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 54
- in a single hotspot: 63 MW
- Average daily power
- 138MW
- 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
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 919 ha in 2016, 1,254 ha in 2017, 773 ha in 2018, 937 ha in 2019, 1,281 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,128 ha that had burned before.
- 1,173 ha Manfran fire, January 2017 70,029 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 798 ha Manfran fire, January 2020 2,731 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 751 ha Manfran fire, February 2016 4,050 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 339 ha Manfran fire, January 2018 2,507 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 100 ha Firawa fire, January 2016 25,026 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 82 ha Manfran fire, February 2017 2,494 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
-
Manfran where it started2,407 ha reached on 18 Jan2.8 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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.
Detections table · 54Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 40,177 haManfranJanuary 2022 · 30 days · 9 km away
- 26,206 haManfran23 January 2021 · 9 days · 13 km away
- 26,689 haManfran5 February 2019 · 11 days · 14 km away
- 25,026 haFirawaJanuary 2016 · 13 days · 17 km away
- 19,542 haManfran24 January 2020 · 16 days · 22 km away
- 72,176 haAlbadariah7 January 2026 · 48 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Manfran fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2021 and 21 January 2021: 4 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 2,392 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Manfran (2,407 ha, 2.8 %).
- 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
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. 54 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 2020, 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 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.