How long did the Pru West fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2017 and 16 January 2017: 15 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 12,915 hectares (129.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pru West (8,959 ha, 5.7 %); Atebubu Amantin (4,036 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

GH · Ghana · 2017-01-02 → 2017-01-16

Pru West fire, January 2017 Pru West, Atebubu Amantin

Out · last detection 17 Jan 2017, 14:10 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2017 in Pru West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,915 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 4 in Ghana in 2017, of 116.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pru West · 2026 Atebubu Amantin · 2019 Atebubu Amantin · 2020 East Gonja · 2024

Burnt area: 12,915ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 2 Jan 2017 – 16 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 2 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 666; in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 437MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 17 Jan 2017

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan16 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 5 Jan 6 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

32km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 22 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.2% of the area of London (129 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

Pru West where it started

8,959 ha reached on 26 Dec

5.7 %
Atebubu Amantin

4,036 ha reached on 27 Dec

1.5 %

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.

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)
2 Jan	34.4 °C	21 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
3 Jan	35.5 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Jan	34.8 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Jan	36.4 °C	13 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Jan	35.9 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Jan	36.6 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Jan	35.7 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Jan	36.1 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Jan	35.5 °C	18 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Jan	36.7 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jan	34.8 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Jan	35.0 °C	16 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Jan	34.3 °C	11 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Jan	34.9 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Jan	35.7 °C	25 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Jan after	35.8 °C	23 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Jan after	37.6 °C	27 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Jan after	35.9 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Jan after	37.7 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 Jan after	38.0 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Jan after	36.4 °C	36 %	39 km/h	3.8 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Dec 2016

After · 23 Jan 2017

Before After

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 · 666Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pru West fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2017 and 16 January 2017: 15 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 12,915 hectares (129.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pru West (8,959 ha, 5.7 %); Atebubu Amantin (4,036 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 666 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.

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.

Where it burned