Sandor fire, 20 March 2022 Sandor, Nieni
The fire started on 20 March 2022 in Sandor, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,256 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 149th largest in Eastern since 2016 (of 263 with a page). Number 95 in Sierra Leone in 2022, of 167.
- Burnt area
- 1,256ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 20 Mar 2022 – 23 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 26
- in a single hotspot: 211 MW
- Energy released
- 1.3GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 420 ha in 2016, 130 ha in 2017, 706 ha in 2019, 112 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,159 ha that had burned before.
- 706 ha Sandor fire, February 2019 24,116 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 416 ha Nieni fire, March 2016 1,141 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 130 ha Nieni fire, April 2017 1,405 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Sandor fire, March 2020 1,479 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Sandor fire, March 2016 1,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Sandor where it started1,154 ha reached on 20 Mar0.8 %
-
110 ha reached on 22 Mar0.0 %
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.
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 · 26Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sandor fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 March 2022 and 23 March 2022: 4 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 1,256 hectares (12.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sandor (1,154 ha, 0.8 %); Nieni (110 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.
Report an error
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.