Skip to content
worldfires
BF · Burkina Faso · →

Pô fire, November 2024 Pô

Out · last detection 17 Nov 2024, 13:25 UTC

The fire started on 16 November 2024 in Pô, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,570 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 19th largest in Nazinon since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 190 in Burkina Faso in 2024, of 380.

Burnt area
1,570ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
16 Nov 2024 – 16 Nov 2024
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
16 Nov
2024
Heat detections
41
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Energy released
615MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Nov 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Nov16 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

1617

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

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,034 ha in 2017, 382 ha in 2021, 293 ha in 2022, 265 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,217 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Pô where it started
    1,579 ha reached on 16 Nov
    1.0 %

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.

Before · 9 Nov 2024
After · 23 Nov 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak53 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10184 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 41Every 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 Burkina Faso ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pô fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 November 2024 and 16 November 2024: 1 day 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 1,570 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pô (1,579 ha, 1.0 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.