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CI · Côte d’Ivoire · –

Saboudougou fire, 1 February 2020 Santa, Saboudougou

Out · last detection 3 Feb 2020, 02:14 UTC

The fire started on 1 February 2020 in Saboudougou, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,000 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 104th largest in Woroba since 2016 (of 105 with a page). Number 157 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2020, of 159.

Burnt area
1,000ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
1 Feb 2020 – 3 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
2
sub-prefectures
Started on
1 Feb
2020
Heat detections
26
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
173MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Feb3 Feb
3 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Feb 2020 · 5 MW · 2 2 Feb 2020 · 513 MW · 23 3 Feb 2020 · 2 MW · 1
1 Feb 2 Feb 3 Feb

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
35km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (10 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. 689 ha
    1.6 %
  2. Saboudougou where it started
    318 ha
    1.0 %

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 area1.5 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.5 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (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)
1 Feb 33.9 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Feb 35.2 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Feb 33.8 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Feb after 33.7 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Feb after 33.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Feb after 33.5 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Feb after 34.1 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Feb after 34.1 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Feb after 34.1 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Feb after 33.7 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
11 Feb after 31.8 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
12 Feb after 33.1 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Feb after 34.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 39.3, a minimum humidity of 21% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 39.3
Minimum humidity 21 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Koonan fire, January 2023
1,503 ha 7 days FWI 37.8 Min. humidity 23 % 15 km away, in 2023

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 8 Feb.

What happened to them

8 days
median duration
1,456 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
3.6 mm
rain at the end (median; 13 of 16 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (1,000 ha against a median of 1,456 ha) and lasted 3 days, against 8 days.

In 3 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.6 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
35km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 3 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 13 of 16, with a median of 3.6 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jan 2020
After · 10 Feb 2020

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 · 0Every 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 Côte d’Ivoire

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Saboudougou fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 February 2020 and 3 February 2020: 3 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 1,000 hectares (10.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santa (689 ha, 1.6 %); Saboudougou (318 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 35 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 Côte d’Ivoire (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 8 days and their median area 1,456 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 3 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.6 mm.

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: 180 · Emergency number and official warnings

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.
  1. Start date: 29 January 2020 → 1 February 2020.
  2. Name: Santa → Saboudougou.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 180.

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. No 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 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.