How long did the Sambaya fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2016 to 10 April 2016 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2016 to 7 April 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,226 hectares (22.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nieni (1,492 ha, 0.6 %); Sambaya (747 ha, 1.1 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SL · Sierra Leone · 2016-03-25 → 2016-04-10

Sambaya fire, 25 March 2016 Nieni, Sambaya

Out · last detection 10 Apr 2016, 13:58 UTC

The fire started on 25 March 2016 in Sambaya, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,226 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 177th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 40 in Sierra Leone in 2016, of 208.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nieni · 2022 Sambaya · 2022 Kunike · 2026 Sandor · 2016

Burnt area: 2,226ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 25 Mar 2016 – 10 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; chiefdoms
Started on: 25 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 105; in a single hotspot: 222 MW
Average daily power: 172MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Mar10 Apr

Play back 10 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

25 Mar 28 Mar 30 Mar 3 Apr 5 Apr 7 Apr 9 Apr

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

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 1.4% of the area of London (22 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

Nieni

1,492 ha reached on 26 Mar

0.6 %
Sambaya where it started

747 ha reached on 25 Mar

1.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Mar 2016

After · 17 Apr 2016

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 · 105Every 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 Sierra Leone ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sambaya fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2016 to 10 April 2016 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2016 to 7 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,226 hectares (22.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nieni (1,492 ha, 0.6 %); Sambaya (747 ha, 1.1 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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?

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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 1 April 2016 to 7 April 2016. 105 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 (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