How long did the Sene East fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 January 2017 to 27 January 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2017 to 24 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,109 hectares (51.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sene East (3,043 ha, 0.7 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (2,079 ha, 0.6 %); Sene West (18 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

GH · Ghana · 2017-01-12 → 2017-01-27

Sene East fire, 12 January 2017 Sene East, Sekyere Afram Plains North, Sene West

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2017, 14:03 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2017 in Sene East, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,109 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 37th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 15 in Ghana in 2017, of 116.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sene East · 2016 Sekyere Afram Plains North · 2022 Sene East · 2017 Sene East · 2020

Burnt area: 5,109ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 12 Jan 2017 – 27 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 12 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 181; in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 134MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan27 Jan

Play back 28 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 18 Jan 20 Jan 23 Jan 27 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

31km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 31 Jan.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,268 ha in 2016.

1,208 ha Sene East fire, January 2016 3,820 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Sene East where it started

3,043 ha reached on 14 Jan

0.7 %
Sekyere Afram Plains North

2,079 ha reached on 19 Jan

0.6 %
Sene West

18 ha

0.0 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
12 Jan	34.1 °C	44 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Jan	33.8 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.6 mm	High 25
14 Jan	33.0 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Jan	34.1 °C	14 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Jan	34.6 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Jan	35.1 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Jan	36.4 °C	33 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Jan	35.6 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Jan	36.1 °C	36 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Jan	37.0 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Jan	36.8 °C	39 %	31 km/h	4.1 mm	Moderate 13
23 Jan	33.4 °C	42 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
24 Jan	34.5 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Jan	35.1 °C	26 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Jan	35.0 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Jan	34.9 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Jan after	35.6 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
29 Jan after	36.6 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Jan after	36.3 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Jan after	36.4 °C	36 %	31 km/h	1.9 mm	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Jan 2017

After · 3 Feb 2017

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 · 181Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sene East fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 January 2017 to 27 January 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2017 to 24 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,109 hectares (51.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sene East (3,043 ha, 0.7 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (2,079 ha, 0.6 %); Sene West (18 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 January 2017 → 27 January 2017.
27 October 2026 Start date: 14 January 2017 → 12 January 2017.

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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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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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 January 2017 to 24 January 2017. 181 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 2015, 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (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