Sengbe fire, 1 April 2026 Nieni, Sengbe
The fire started on 1 April 2026 in Sengbe, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,208 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 183th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 78 in Sierra Leone in 2026, of 305.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Sengbe · 2023Sengbe · 2020Nieni · 2019Sengbe · 2025
- Burnt area
- 2,208ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 1 Apr 2026 – 7 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 1 Apr
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 47
- in a single hotspot: 143 MW
- Average daily power
- 116MW
- detected power per day, on average
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
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 427 ha in 2016, 722 ha in 2017, 474 ha in 2018, 821 ha in 2019, 823 ha in 2020, 333 ha in 2022, 914 ha in 2023, 625 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,869 ha that had burned before.
- 885 ha Sengbe fire, March 2023 7,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 823 ha Sengbe fire, March 2020 1,921 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 821 ha Nieni fire, March 2019 2,221 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 625 ha Sengbe fire, March 2025 4,109 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 508 ha Nieni fire, March 2017 2,507 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 474 ha Nieni fire, March 2018 1,765 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 427 ha Nieni fire, March 2016 1,805 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 333 ha Sengbe fire, March 2022 3,066 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,344 ha reached on 2 Apr0.6 %
-
Sengbe where it started879 ha reached on 1 Apr0.7 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.71 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 8 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 47Every 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 1 April 2026 and 7 April 2026: 7 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 2,208 hectares (22.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nieni (1,344 ha, 0.6 %); Sengbe (879 ha, 0.7 %).
- 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
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 47 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.