Neya fire, 22 February 2019 Lei, Neya, Sandor
The fire started on 22 February 2019 in Neya, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,463 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 146th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 30 in Sierra Leone in 2019, of 180.
- Burnt area
- 2,463ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 22 Feb 2019 – 6 Mar 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 22 Feb
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 102
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Energy released
- 569MW
- sum of detected power
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
42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 889 ha in 2016, 152 ha in 2018.
- 823 ha Sandor fire, January 2016 3,648 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 152 ha Neya fire, December 2018 1,197 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 66 ha Lei fire, January 2016 1,020 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
1,224 ha reached on 23 Feb1.8 %
-
Neya where it started943 ha reached on 22 Feb0.6 %
-
281 ha reached on 1 Mar0.2 %
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.
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 · 102Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Neya fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 February 2019 and 6 March 2019: 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 2,463 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lei (1,224 ha, 1.8 %); Neya (943 ha, 0.6 %); Sandor (281 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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
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
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.