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Pru West fire, 2 January 2018 Pru West, Atebubu Amantin

Out · last detection 8 Jan 2018, 12:54 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2018 in Pru West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,763 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 109th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 23 in Ghana in 2018, of 59.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pru West · 2017Pru West · 2026Atebubu Amantin · 2019Atebubu Amantin · 2020

Burnt area
2,763ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
2 Jan 2018 – 7 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
2 Jan
2018
Heat detections
77
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
72MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan7 Jan
8 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 2018 · 39 MW · 3 3 Jan 2018 · 88 MW · 14 4 Jan 2018 · 199 MW · 33 5 Jan 2018 · 75 MW · 10 7 Jan 2018 · 17 MW · 1 8 Jan 2018 · 11 MW · 2
2 Jan 3 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 7 Jan 8 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

35°high
30km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,672 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (28 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. Pru West where it started
    2,764 ha reached on 26 Dec
    1.8 %
  2. Atebubu Amantin
    15 ha reached on 12 Jan
    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 2020
Built-up area0.17 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
2 Jan 33.5 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jan 32.9 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jan 33.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Jan 34.6 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jan 33.6 °C 34 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Jan 34.2 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Jan after 35.2 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Jan after 35.4 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Jan after 35.6 °C 21 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jan after 35.3 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jan after 35.5 °C 10 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jan after 34.6 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jan after 34.9 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Jan after 35.6 °C 24 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jan after 35.6 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jan after 35.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2017
After · 14 Jan 2018

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 · 77Every 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 Pru West fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2018 and 7 January 2018: 6 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 2,763 hectares (27.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pru West (2,764 ha, 1.8 %); Atebubu Amantin (15 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 77 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.

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.