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Sene West fire, 5 January 2026 Sene West, Pru East

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2026, 13:00 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2026 in Sene West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,404 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 9 in Ghana in 2026, of 179.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sene West · 2019Sene West · 2022Sene West · 2026Atebubu Amantin · 2026

Burnt area
12,404ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
5 Jan 2026 – 29 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Jan
2026
Heat detections
512
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
128MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan29 Jan
30 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jan 2026 · 320 MW · 21 6 Jan 2026 · 5 MW · 2 7 Jan 2026 · 101 MW · 15 8 Jan 2026 · 17 MW · 3 9 Jan 2026 · 52 MW · 11 10 Jan 2026 · 64 MW · 9 11 Jan 2026 · 363 MW · 27 12 Jan 2026 · 73 MW · 19 13 Jan 2026 · 155 MW · 24 14 Jan 2026 · 27 MW · 5 15 Jan 2026 · 59 MW · 4 16 Jan 2026 · 112 MW · 17 17 Jan 2026 · 132 MW · 18 18 Jan 2026 · 157 MW · 28 19 Jan 2026 · 190 MW · 30 20 Jan 2026 · 92 MW · 9 21 Jan 2026 · 88 MW · 9 22 Jan 2026 · 98 MW · 24 23 Jan 2026 · 121 MW · 30 24 Jan 2026 · 156 MW · 29 25 Jan 2026 · 450 MW · 93 26 Jan 2026 · 277 MW · 41 27 Jan 2026 · 125 MW · 15 28 Jan 2026 · 37 MW · 9 29 Jan 2026 · 55 MW · 16 30 Jan 2026 · 17 MW · 4
5 Jan 9 Jan 13 Jan 17 Jan 21 Jan 25 Jan 29 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

38°high
35km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,373 ha in 2019, 947 ha in 2020, 4,028 ha in 2022, 784 ha in 2023, 306 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,572 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (124 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 West where it started
    12,351 ha
    3.8 %
  2. Pru East
    142 ha
    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 2025
Built-up area1.8 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
5 Jan 37.6 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jan 37.7 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Jan 37.7 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jan 35.0 °C 41 % 30 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 19
9 Jan 37.4 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Jan 37.1 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jan 36.6 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jan 36.3 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Jan 37.5 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Jan 36.5 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jan 36.3 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jan 36.9 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Jan 37.2 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Jan 37.5 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jan 38.2 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jan 37.3 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Jan 35.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jan 36.3 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Jan 36.6 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jan 36.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jan 37.3 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
26 Jan 37.3 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Jan 38.0 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Jan 37.9 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jan 37.8 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Jan after 38.4 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jan after 38.1 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Feb after 37.9 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Feb after 38.2 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Feb after 37.1 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Feb after 39.4 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Feb after 39.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Feb after 38.5 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Feb after 36.6 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
8 Feb after 39.3 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2025
After · 5 Feb 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 148 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 91: 6.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak148 µg/m³
Days over the guideline30 days
PM10263 µg/m³
Optical depth1.36
3456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 0Every 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 5 January 2026 and 29 January 2026: 25 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 12,404 hectares (124.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sene West (12,351 ha, 3.8 %); Pru East (142 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2025, 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.