Sengbe fire, 20 January 2018 Sengbe, Mongo
The fire started on 20 January 2018 in Sengbe, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,242 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 684th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 63 in Sierra Leone in 2018, of 104.
- Burnt area
- 1,242ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 20 Jan 2018 – 22 Jan 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 20 Jan
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 37
- in a single hotspot: 51 MW
- Energy released
- 206MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,049 ha in 2016, 2 ha in 2017.
- 925 ha Sengbe fire, January 2016 1,298 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 124 ha Mongo fire, April 2016 2,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Sengbe fire, February 2017 1,426 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Sengbe where it started1,239 ha reached on 18 Jan1.0 %
-
11 ha0.0 %
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.
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 · 37Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sengbe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 January 2018 and 22 January 2018: 3 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 1,242 hectares (12.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sengbe (1,239 ha, 1.0 %); Mongo (11 ha, 0.0 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (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.
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
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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (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.