Sangardo fire, 29 January 2025 Douako, Sangardo
The fire started on 29 January 2025 in Sangardo, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,064 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 74th largest in Faranah since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 19 in Guinea in 2025, of 71.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,064ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 29 Jan 2025 – 13 Feb 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 29 Jan
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 80
- in a single hotspot: 46 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 185MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,286 ha in 2017, 1,686 ha in 2018, 894 ha in 2019, 2,581 ha in 2020, 2,801 ha in 2021, 483 ha in 2022, 679 ha in 2023, 1,409 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,075 ha that had burned before.
- 2,001 ha Sangardo fire, January 2017 10,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,724 ha Douako fire, January 2021 5,771 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,686 ha Douako fire, January 2018 22,404 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,678 ha Douako fire, February 2020 2,565 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,371 ha Douako fire, January 2024 4,606 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 902 ha Sangardo fire, January 2020 12,622 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 483 ha Douako fire, January 2022 2,621 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,604 ha reached on 7 Feb0.6 %
-
Sangardo where it started1,479 ha reached on 1 Feb1.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Feb | 35.7 °C | 11 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Feb | 34.7 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 6 Feb | 35.3 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 7 Feb | 36.2 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Feb | 36.7 °C | 13 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 9 Feb | 37.8 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Feb | 38.0 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Feb | 38.4 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 12 Feb | 38.0 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Feb | 35.7 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Feb after | 33.9 °C | 34 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 15 Feb after | 37.7 °C | 24 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Feb after | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Feb after | 37.5 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Feb after | 39.3 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 11 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 87: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 80Every 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 Sangardo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 January 2025 to 13 February 2025 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 February 2025 to 8 February 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,064 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Douako (1,604 ha, 0.6 %); Sangardo (1,479 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 35 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 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 8 February 2025 → 13 February 2025.
- Start date: 4 February 2025 → 29 January 2025.
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
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 4 February 2025 to 8 February 2025. 80 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.