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Sandor fire, 17 March 2022 Sandor, Nieni, Nimiyama

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2022, 14:16 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2022 in Sandor, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,260 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 148th largest in Eastern since 2016 (of 263 with a page). Number 93 in Sierra Leone in 2022, of 167.

Burnt area
1,260ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
17 Mar 2022 – 25 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
4
chiefdoms
Started on
17 Mar
2022
Heat detections
32
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Energy released
370MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Mar 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar25 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1920222425

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

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 54 ha in 2017, 320 ha in 2019, 209 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 536 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandor where it started
    743 ha reached on 11 Mar
    0.5 %
  2. Nieni
    458 ha reached on 11 Mar
    0.2 %
  3. Nimiyama
    28 ha reached on 25 Mar
    0.1 %
  4. Kunike
    8 ha
    0.0 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Mar 2022
After · 1 Apr 2022

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 · 32Every 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 Sierra Leone ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sandor fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 March 2022 and 25 March 2022: 9 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 1,260 hectares (12.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Sandor (743 ha, 0.5 %); Nieni (458 ha, 0.2 %); Nimiyama (28 ha, 0.1 %); Kunike (8 ha, 0.0 %).
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

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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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.