How long did the Sene West fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2017 to 27 January 2017 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2017 to 20 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,933 hectares (209.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sene West (12,789 ha, 3.9 %); Sene East (8,180 ha, 1.8 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (86 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2017-01-04 → 2017-01-27

Sene West fire, 4 January 2017 Sene West, Sene East, Sekyere Afram Plains North

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

The fire started on 4 January 2017 in Sene West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,933 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 3 in Ghana in 2017, of 116.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 20,933ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 4 Jan 2017 – 27 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 4 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 802; in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 227MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan27 Jan

Play back 28 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jan 9 Jan 13 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 22 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

34km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 31 Jan.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,634 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (209 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 West where it started

12,789 ha reached on 4 Jan

3.9 %
Sene East

8,180 ha reached on 8 Jan

1.8 %
Sekyere Afram Plains North

86 ha reached on 14 Jan

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)
4 Jan	34.1 °C	20 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Jan	35.7 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Jan	35.1 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
7 Jan	35.5 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Jan	34.4 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Jan	35.0 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Jan	34.3 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Jan	36.0 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jan	33.9 °C	42 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Jan	34.1 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 Jan	33.3 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Jan	34.2 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
16 Jan	34.5 °C	29 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Jan	34.9 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Jan	36.2 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Jan	35.3 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Jan	36.0 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 Jan	36.9 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Jan	36.5 °C	34 %	34 km/h	7.4 mm	Moderate 12
23 Jan	33.1 °C	37 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Jan	34.4 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Jan	35.3 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Jan	35.2 °C	26 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Jan	34.6 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Jan after	35.5 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Jan after	36.6 °C	32 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Jan after	36.1 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Jan after	36.0 °C	35 %	29 km/h	1.1 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Dec 2016

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 · 802Every 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 West fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2017 to 27 January 2017 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2017 to 20 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,933 hectares (209.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sene West (12,789 ha, 3.9 %); Sene East (8,180 ha, 1.8 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (86 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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: 20 January 2017 → 27 January 2017.
27 October 2026 Start date: 7 January 2017 → 4 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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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?

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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 7 January 2017 to 20 January 2017. 802 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