Nieni fire, 18 February 2019 Nieni
The fire started on 18 February 2019 in Nieni, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,520 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 140th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 28 in Sierra Leone in 2019, of 182.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Nieni · 2017Nieni · 2016Nieni · 2019Nieni · 2016
- Burnt area
- 2,520ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 18 Feb 2019 – 7 Mar 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 18 Feb
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 135
- in a single hotspot: 114 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 130MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016, 1,484 ha in 2017.
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
-
Nieni where it started2,537 ha reached on 18 Feb1.1 %
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 were about 0.74 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Feb | 35.1 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 19 Feb | 35.4 °C | 19 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Feb | 34.0 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Feb | 35.1 °C | 25 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Feb | 37.5 °C | 10 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Feb | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Feb | 35.3 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Feb | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Feb | 35.4 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Feb | 35.0 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 28 Feb | 34.7 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 1 Mar | 34.9 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Mar | 34.5 °C | 8 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 3 Mar | 35.6 °C | 9 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Mar | 36.3 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Mar | 36.0 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Mar | 37.5 °C | 12 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Mar | 37.2 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Mar after | 36.6 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Mar after | 36.2 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 10 Mar after | 35.2 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
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 · 135Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,359 haNieni24 February 2019 · 32 days · 14 km away
- 6,533 haNieni25 March 2016 · 22 days · 14 km away
- 7,774 haSengbe12 March 2023 · 22 days · 18 km away
- 6,232 haNieni25 February 2019 · 31 days · 24 km away
- 5,731 haNieni19 March 2018 · 12 days · 29 km away
- 9,579 haNieni5 March 2022 · 26 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Nieni fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 February 2019 to 7 March 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 February 2019 to 28 February 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,520 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Nieni (2,537 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 28 February 2019 → 7 March 2019.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 February 2019 to 28 February 2019. 135 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 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 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.