Skip to content
worldfires
en
GH · Ghana · →

Sene East fire, December 2017 Sene East, Sene West, Sekyere Afram Plains North

Out · last detection 6 Feb 2018, 13:50 UTC

The fire started on 25 December 2017 in Sene East, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 44 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 89,521 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). The largest in Ghana in 2017, of 116.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sene West · 2017Sene West · 2016Sene East · 2017Sekyere Afram Plains North · 2017

Burnt area
89,521ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
44days
25 Dec 2017 – 6 Feb 2018
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
25 Dec
2017
Heat detections
3,640
in a single hotspot: 169 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
869MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Dec6 Feb
6 Feb 2018

How it evolved, day by day

25 Dec 2017 · 15 MW · 3 26 Dec 2017 · 9 MW · 2 27 Dec 2017 · 5 MW · 1 28 Dec 2017 · 5 MW · 1 30 Dec 2017 · 282 MW · 26 31 Dec 2017 · 865 MW · 71 1 Jan 2018 · 386 MW · 63 2 Jan 2018 · 426 MW · 41 3 Jan 2018 · 84 MW · 19 4 Jan 2018 · 63 MW · 14 5 Jan 2018 · 858 MW · 89 6 Jan 2018 · 1,807 MW · 186 7 Jan 2018 · 188 MW · 48 8 Jan 2018 · 444 MW · 28 9 Jan 2018 · 1,829 MW · 132 10 Jan 2018 · 1,739 MW · 322 11 Jan 2018 · 1,319 MW · 158 12 Jan 2018 · 1,338 MW · 128 13 Jan 2018 · 1,374 MW · 137 14 Jan 2018 · 944 MW · 146 15 Jan 2018 · 550 MW · 126 16 Jan 2018 · 348 MW · 67 17 Jan 2018 · 2,860 MW · 216 18 Jan 2018 · 3,104 MW · 178 19 Jan 2018 · 404 MW · 82 20 Jan 2018 · 1,543 MW · 175 21 Jan 2018 · 2,357 MW · 264 22 Jan 2018 · 5,599 MW · 306 23 Jan 2018 · 2,755 MW · 251 24 Jan 2018 · 638 MW · 85 25 Jan 2018 · 18 MW · 26 26 Jan 2018 · 447 MW · 90 27 Jan 2018 · 502 MW · 65 28 Jan 2018 · 192 MW · 30 29 Jan 2018 · 10 MW · 5 30 Jan 2018 · 23 MW · 8 31 Jan 2018 · 237 MW · 33 1 Feb 2018 · 27 MW · 9 4 Feb 2018 · 2 MW · 1 5 Feb 2018 · 1 MW · 1 6 Feb 2018 · 30 MW · 7
25 Dec 1 Jan 7 Jan 13 Jan 19 Jan 22 Jan 25 Jan 31 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

39°high
29km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25,665 ha in 2016, 38,417 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 50,401 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 57% of the area of London (895 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. Sene East where it started
    40,366 ha reached on 25 Dec
    9.1 %
  2. Sene West
    25,205 ha reached on 30 Dec
    7.7 %
  3. Sekyere Afram Plains North
    24,203 ha reached on 25 Dec
    6.8 %
  4. Kwahu Afram Plains South
    293 ha reached on 1 Jan
    0.1 %

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)
25 Dec 34.2 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Dec 34.0 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Dec 34.8 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Dec 34.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Dec 34.1 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Dec 34.5 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Dec 34.1 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Jan 34.0 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Jan 32.6 °C 34 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Jan 32.5 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Jan 33.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Jan 33.5 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Jan 32.7 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Jan 34.0 °C 41 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Jan 34.9 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Jan 34.5 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jan 34.5 °C 37 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jan 34.8 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Jan 35.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jan 34.7 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jan 34.1 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jan 34.6 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jan 35.1 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Jan 34.1 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Jan 35.9 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Jan 35.1 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jan 36.3 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Jan 35.3 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jan 35.3 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jan 34.4 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jan 33.9 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jan 32.2 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Jan 34.2 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jan 35.0 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jan 34.5 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jan 35.4 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jan 35.2 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jan 34.9 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Feb 36.0 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Feb 35.9 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Feb 35.2 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Feb 37.5 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Feb 37.9 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Feb 38.6 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Feb after 37.7 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Feb after 39.0 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Feb after 37.1 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Feb after 37.8 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Feb after 37.5 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Feb after 37.8 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
13 Feb after 38.0 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Feb after 38.6 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Feb after 38.2 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Feb after 37.4 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Dec 2017
After · 13 Feb 2018

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 · 3,640Every 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 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 25 December 2017 to 6 February 2018 (44 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 December 2017 to 31 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 89,521 hectares (895.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Sene East (40,366 ha, 9.1 %); Sene West (25,205 ha, 7.7 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (24,203 ha, 6.8 %); Kwahu Afram Plains South (293 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 31 January 2018 → 6 February 2018.
  2. Start date: 30 December 2017 → 25 December 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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; 13 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 December 2017 to 31 January 2018. 3,640 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.