Nieni fire, 24 February 2019 Nieni, Neya, Sandor
The fire started on 24 February 2019 in Nieni, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,359 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 2 in Sierra Leone in 2019, of 182.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Nieni · 2017Nieni · 2017Nieni · 2018Nieni · 2018
- Burnt area
- 10,359ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 32days
- 24 Feb 2019 – 27 Mar 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 691
- in a single hotspot: 134 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 369MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 15.1 mm on 28 Mar.
This area had burned before
49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 116 ha in 2016, 3,807 ha in 2017, 1,776 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,090 ha that had burned before.
- 1,355 ha Nieni fire, March 2017 2,063 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,001 ha Nieni fire, March 2017 1,040 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 867 ha Nieni fire, March 2018 1,040 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 700 ha Nieni fire, March 2018 1,321 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 669 ha Neya fire, March 2017 1,410 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 560 ha Nieni fire, March 2017 2,608 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 209 ha Nieni fire, March 2018 2,562 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 136 ha Nieni fire, March 2017 1,501 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
-
Nieni where it started7,496 ha reached on 24 Feb3.3 %
-
2,514 ha reached on 4 Mar1.7 %
-
412 ha reached on 12 Mar0.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Feb | 35.7 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 Feb | 36.2 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Feb | 35.6 °C | 19 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Feb | 35.7 °C | 9 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 28 Feb | 35.0 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Mar | 35.8 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 2 Mar | 35.2 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Mar | 36.0 °C | 11 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 4 Mar | 36.6 °C | 11 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 5 Mar | 36.4 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 6 Mar | 37.8 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 7 Mar | 37.5 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Mar | 36.9 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Mar | 36.5 °C | 16 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 10 Mar | 35.8 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 11 Mar | 35.0 °C | 37 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Mar | 35.9 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Mar | 37.7 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 14 Mar | 37.3 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 Mar | 37.6 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 Mar | 38.0 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Mar | 38.1 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Mar | 37.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 19 Mar | 37.6 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 20 Mar | 34.9 °C | 40 % | 28 km/h | 2.2 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 21 Mar | 36.0 °C | 39 % | 29 km/h | 8.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 22 Mar | 30.6 °C | 61 % | 27 km/h | 2.7 mm | Very low 4 |
| 23 Mar | 32.1 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 24 Mar | 34.7 °C | 37 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 25 Mar | 35.1 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 26 Mar | 34.3 °C | 38 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 27 Mar | 34.4 °C | 40 % | 22 km/h | 2.8 mm | Low 9 |
| 28 Mar after | 33.2 °C | 54 % | 27 km/h | 15.1 mm | Very low 1 |
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 · 691Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,232 haNieni25 February 2019 · 31 days · 16 km away
- 6,533 haNieni25 March 2016 · 22 days · 24 km away
- 24,116 haSandor23 February 2019 · 33 days · 32 km away
- 7,774 haSengbe12 March 2023 · 22 days · 32 km away
- 9,579 haNieni5 March 2022 · 26 days · 37 km away
- 6,826 haSandor19 March 2016 · 29 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 24 February 2019 to 27 March 2019 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2019 to 20 March 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,359 hectares (103.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Nieni (7,496 ha, 3.3 %); Neya (2,514 ha, 1.7 %); Sandor (412 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 20 March 2019 → 27 March 2019.
- Start date: 3 March 2019 → 24 February 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 March 2019 to 20 March 2019. 691 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.
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.