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Sene West fire, 2 January 2018 Sene West, Sekyere Afram Plains North

Out · last detection 5 Jan 2018, 13:50 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2018 in Sene West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,107 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 177th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 53 in Ghana in 2018, of 59.

Burnt area
2,107ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
2 Jan 2018 – 5 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
2 Jan
2018
Heat detections
32
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Energy released
510MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Jan 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan5 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

245

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

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 579 ha in 2016, 767 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,154 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sene West where it started
    1,905 ha reached on 2 Jan
    0.6 %
  2. Sekyere Afram Plains North
    215 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2017
After · 12 Jan 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 · 32Every 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 West fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2018 and 5 January 2018: 4 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,107 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sene West (1,905 ha, 0.6 %); Sekyere Afram Plains North (215 ha, 0.1 %).
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.