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Sangardo fire, 24 January 2020 Sangardo, Banian, Douako

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2020, 13:38 UTC

The fire started on 24 January 2020 in Sangardo, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,622 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 3 in Guinea in 2020, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sangardo · 2019Douako · 2018Sangardo · 2017Albadariah · 2016

Burnt area
12,622ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
24 Jan 2020 – 17 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
3
sub-prefectures
Started on
24 Jan
2020
Heat detections
566
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
170MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jan17 Feb
18 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jan 2020 · 190 MW · 21 25 Jan 2020 · 286 MW · 25 26 Jan 2020 · 288 MW · 31 27 Jan 2020 · 350 MW · 65 28 Jan 2020 · 91 MW · 16 29 Jan 2020 · 227 MW · 24 30 Jan 2020 · 281 MW · 37 31 Jan 2020 · 169 MW · 23 1 Feb 2020 · 446 MW · 48 2 Feb 2020 · 6 MW · 4 3 Feb 2020 · 292 MW · 20 4 Feb 2020 · 227 MW · 30 5 Feb 2020 · 139 MW · 22 6 Feb 2020 · 153 MW · 27 7 Feb 2020 · 90 MW · 18 8 Feb 2020 · 21 MW · 11 9 Feb 2020 · 59 MW · 8 10 Feb 2020 · 128 MW · 9 11 Feb 2020 · 15 MW · 4 12 Feb 2020 · 27 MW · 9 13 Feb 2020 · 64 MW · 8 14 Feb 2020 · 182 MW · 24 15 Feb 2020 · 35 MW · 15 16 Feb 2020 · 190 MW · 20 17 Feb 2020 · 410 MW · 32 18 Feb 2020 · 65 MW · 15
24 Jan 28 Jan 1 Feb 5 Feb 9 Feb 13 Feb 17 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,110 ha in 2016, 4,980 ha in 2017, 1,604 ha in 2018, 2,198 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,968 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8% of the area of London (126 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. Sangardo where it started
    8,255 ha reached on 24 Jan
    7.2 %
  2. Banian
    3,462 ha reached on 24 Jan
    1.8 %
  3. Douako
    986 ha reached on 24 Jan
    0.3 %

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 area0.55 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.55 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
24 Jan 33.6 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jan 35.9 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Jan 35.5 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jan 35.3 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jan 34.8 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jan 35.4 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Jan 36.3 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Feb 35.6 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Feb 35.5 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Feb 35.1 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Feb 35.2 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Feb 35.1 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Feb 35.4 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Feb 35.8 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Feb 35.2 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Feb 35.2 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Feb 34.5 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Feb 34.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Feb 34.9 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Feb 36.3 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Feb 36.3 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Feb 36.9 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Feb 38.0 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Feb 38.1 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Feb after 37.0 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Feb after 37.7 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Feb after 37.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
21 Feb after 36.4 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm High 37
22 Feb after 36.9 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Feb after 37.9 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
24 Feb after 39.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Feb after 38.8 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Feb after 39.3 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Feb after 37.5 °C 16 % 21 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 · 17 Jan 2020
After · 24 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 · 566Every 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 Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sangardo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 January 2020 and 17 February 2020: 25 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 12,622 hectares (126.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sangardo (8,255 ha, 7.2 %); Banian (3,462 ha, 1.8 %); Douako (986 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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 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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 566 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.