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North Gonja fire, 3 December 2017 North Gonja, Wa East, Mamprugu Moagduri

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2017, 13:39 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2017 in North Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,073 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 122th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 335 with a page). Number 49 in Ghana in 2017, of 116.

Compare with…

Suggestions: North Gonja · 2017North Gonja · 2024North Gonja · 2025

Burnt area
3,073ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
3 Dec 2017 – 11 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
3 Dec
2017
Heat detections
114
in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
305MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec11 Dec
10 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2017 · 1,141 MW · 40 4 Dec 2017 · 160 MW · 21 5 Dec 2017 · 296 MW · 44 6 Dec 2017 · 218 MW · 5 9 Dec 2017 · 7 MW · 3 10 Dec 2017 · 7 MW · 1
3 Dec 4 Dec 5 Dec 6 Dec 9 Dec 10 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
32km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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. North Gonja where it started
    3,048 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.6 %
  2. Wa East
    31 ha reached on 9 Dec
    0.0 %
  3. Mamprugu Moagduri
    17 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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
3 Dec 35.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Dec 36.1 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Dec 35.4 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Dec 35.2 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Dec 35.2 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 34.9 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Dec 32.7 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Dec 32.1 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec 33.0 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Dec after 33.3 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Dec after 35.3 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Dec after 35.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Dec after 34.4 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Dec after 36.5 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2017
After · 18 Dec 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 · 114Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the North Gonja fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2017 to 11 December 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2017 to 6 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,073 hectares (30.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: North Gonja (3,048 ha, 0.6 %); Wa East (31 ha, 0.0 %); Mamprugu Moagduri (17 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.
  1. Last day with fire: 6 December 2017 → 11 December 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 3 December 2017 to 6 December 2017. 114 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (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.