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Manfran fire, 29 January 2025 Manfran, Albadariah

Out · last detection 11 Feb 2025, 13:14 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2025 in Manfran, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,242 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). The largest in Guinea in 2025, of 70.

Burnt area
11,242ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
29 Jan 2025 – 10 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit
2
sub-prefectures
Started on
29 Jan
2025
Heat detections
467
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Feb 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan10 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

2930311234567891011

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
35km/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

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,145 ha in 2016, 8,085 ha in 2017, 2,165 ha in 2018, 8,207 ha in 2019, 4,884 ha in 2020, 7,531 ha in 2021, 7,253 ha in 2022, 2,951 ha in 2023, 6,200 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,191 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Manfran where it started
    11,311 ha reached on 24 Jan
    13 %
  2. 5 ha
    0.0 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
29 Jan 35.7 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Jan 36.1 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Jan 35.7 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Feb 34.1 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Feb 32.8 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Feb 32.3 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Feb 35.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Feb 34.8 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Feb 34.8 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Feb 35.8 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Feb 36.3 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Feb 37.6 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Feb 37.6 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Feb after 38.0 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Feb after 37.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Feb after 36.1 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
14 Feb after 34.3 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.9 mm High 29
15 Feb after 36.8 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Feb after 37.5 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Feb after 37.2 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Feb after 38.9 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Feb after 37.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Feb after 38.0 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jan 2025
After · 17 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 11 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 130 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 98: 6.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak130 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10304 µg/m³
Optical depth1.19
272829303112345678910111213
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 · 467Every 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 Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manfran fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 January 2025 and 10 February 2025: 13 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 11,242 hectares (112.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Manfran (11,311 ha, 13 %); Albadariah (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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

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 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.