How long did the Sene East fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2018 to 1 February 2018 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,788 hectares (137.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sene East (12,219 ha, 2.8 %); Sene West (1,656 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

GH · Ghana · 2018-01-13 → 2018-02-01

Sene East fire, 13 January 2018 Sene East, Sene West

Out · last detection 1 Feb 2018, 13:44 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2018 in Sene East, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,788 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). The largest in Ghana in 2018, of 59.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sene East · 2017 Sene East · 2016 Sene East · 2017 Sene West · 2017

Burnt area: 13,788ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 13 Jan 2018 – 1 Feb 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 13 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 402; in a single hotspot: 157 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 231MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan1 Feb

Play back 1 Feb 2018

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan 26 Jan 1 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

36°high

30km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,458 ha in 2016, 3,868 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,420 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (138 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

12,219 ha reached on 13 Jan

2.8 %
Sene West

1,656 ha reached on 15 Jan

0.5 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
13 Jan	34.3 °C	17 %	25 km/h	High 38
14 Jan	33.8 °C	24 %	24 km/h	High 37
15 Jan	34.5 °C	30 %	25 km/h	High 37
16 Jan	34.9 °C	37 %	23 km/h	High 33
17 Jan	33.6 °C	42 %	27 km/h	High 29
18 Jan	35.5 °C	29 %	27 km/h	High 32
19 Jan	34.8 °C	32 %	21 km/h	High 32
20 Jan	35.9 °C	30 %	24 km/h	High 33
21 Jan	35.1 °C	30 %	26 km/h	High 32
22 Jan	35.2 °C	26 %	30 km/h	High 35
23 Jan	33.9 °C	31 %	26 km/h	High 33
24 Jan	33.3 °C	38 %	27 km/h	High 32
25 Jan	31.9 °C	34 %	27 km/h	High 30
26 Jan	33.8 °C	28 %	24 km/h	High 32
27 Jan	34.6 °C	30 %	26 km/h	High 34
28 Jan	34.3 °C	34 %	27 km/h	High 35
29 Jan	35.0 °C	31 %	29 km/h	High 32
30 Jan	34.8 °C	33 %	28 km/h	High 33
31 Jan	34.3 °C	41 %	28 km/h	High 30
1 Feb	35.4 °C	38 %	28 km/h	High 32
2 Feb after	35.6 °C	42 %	26 km/h	High 32
3 Feb after	34.8 °C	42 %	30 km/h	High 32
4 Feb after	36.9 °C	31 %	28 km/h	High 34
5 Feb after	37.3 °C	33 %	28 km/h	High 34
6 Feb after	38.3 °C	32 %	28 km/h	High 36
7 Feb after	37.7 °C	32 %	31 km/h	High 36
8 Feb after	39.3 °C	26 %	29 km/h	Very high 39
9 Feb after	36.8 °C	31 %	26 km/h	Very high 39
10 Feb after	37.3 °C	29 %	24 km/h	Very high 38
11 Feb after	36.9 °C	32 %	27 km/h	Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Jan 2018

After · 8 Feb 2018

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 · 402Every 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 13 January 2018 to 1 February 2018 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,788 hectares (137.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sene East (12,219 ha, 2.8 %); Sene West (1,656 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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: 26 January 2018 → 1 February 2018.
27 October 2026 Start date: 19 January 2018 → 13 January 2018.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018. 402 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 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