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Moussayah fire, 14 April 2017 Moussayah, Kaliah, Farmoriah

Out · last detection 27 Apr 2017, 14:35 UTC

The fire started on 14 April 2017 in Moussayah, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,988 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in Kindia since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 17 in Guinea in 2017, of 172.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moussayah · 2024Kaliah · 2021Moussayah · 2016Tonko Limba · 2026

Burnt area
5,988ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
14 Apr 2017 – 27 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
3
sub-prefectures
Started on
14 Apr
2017
Heat detections
290
in a single hotspot: 528 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Apr27 Apr
27 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

14 Apr 2017 · 24 MW · 2 15 Apr 2017 · 117 MW · 10 16 Apr 2017 · 5,255 MW · 89 17 Apr 2017 · 421 MW · 21 19 Apr 2017 · 1,741 MW · 52 20 Apr 2017 · 3,993 MW · 67 21 Apr 2017 · 3 MW · 2 22 Apr 2017 · 178 MW · 9 23 Apr 2017 · 1,212 MW · 20 24 Apr 2017 · 127 MW · 9 25 Apr 2017 · 138 MW · 5 27 Apr 2017 · 58 MW · 4
14 Apr 16 Apr 19 Apr 21 Apr 23 Apr 25 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
45km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 28 Apr.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,032 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Moussayah where it started
    5,391 ha reached on 14 Apr
    8.6 %
  2. Kaliah
    634 ha reached on 15 Apr
    1.1 %
  3. Farmoriah
    1 ha
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area14 ha
Residents≈ 3,800

Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 3,800 residents (GHSL 2015, 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

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)
14 Apr 35.8 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Apr 36.0 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Apr 35.2 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Apr 36.4 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Apr 38.6 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Apr 37.0 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
20 Apr 35.5 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Apr 36.4 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Apr 34.6 °C 54 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18
23 Apr 34.1 °C 52 % 39 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 19
24 Apr 35.9 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
25 Apr 37.6 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Apr 37.3 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Apr 34.4 °C 58 % 33 km/h 5.8 mm Very low 5
28 Apr after 34.5 °C 52 % 36 km/h 4.1 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Apr 2017
After · 4 May 2017

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 · 290Every 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 Moussayah fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 April 2017 to 27 April 2017 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 April 2017 to 21 April 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,988 hectares (59.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Moussayah (5,391 ha, 8.6 %); Kaliah (634 ha, 1.1 %); Farmoriah (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 April 2017 → 27 April 2017.
  2. Start date: 15 April 2017 → 14 April 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 April 2017 to 21 April 2017. 290 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.