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ML · Mali · –

Sagabala fire, 5 November 2026 Madina, Sagabala

Dying down · last detection 10 Nov 2026, 02:38 UTC

The fire started on 5 November 2026 in Sagabala, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,018 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 11 in Mali in 2026, of 190.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Is it still active?

No detections since 10 Nov 2026, 02:38 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
8,018ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
5 Nov 2026 – 10 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
5 Nov
2026
Heat detections
139
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
350MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov10 Nov
10 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 6 Nov 2026 · 637 MW · 49 7 Nov 2026 · 486 MW · 52 8 Nov 2026 · 619 MW · 33 9 Nov 2026 · 9 MW · 3 10 Nov 2026 · 1 MW · 2
6 Nov 9 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
40km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 33 ha in 2017, 598 ha in 2019, 1,325 ha in 2020, 1,741 ha in 2021, 860 ha in 2022, 328 ha in 2023, 976 ha in 2024, 3,373 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,544 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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. 7,371 ha reached on 6 Nov
    1.2 %
  2. Sagabala where it started
    709 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.2 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Nov 36.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Nov 38.2 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Nov 37.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Nov 35.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Nov 35.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Oct 2026
After · 9 Nov 2026

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 8 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak48 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10212 µg/m³
Optical depth0.36
3 Nov5 Nov7 Nov
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 · 139Every 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 Mali

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sagabala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 November 2026 to 10 November 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 November 2026 to 8 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,018 hectares (80.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Madina (7,371 ha, 1.2 %); Sagabala (709 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Sagabala fire still active?
No fire detections since 10 Nov 2026, 02:38 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 8 November 2026.
  1. Area: 4,586 → 8,018 ha.
  2. Start date: 6 November 2026 → 5 November 2026.
  3. Page published (4,586 ha).

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.

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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 6 November 2026 to 8 November 2026. 139 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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 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.