Soa fire, 26 January 2026 Soa, Gbane Kandor
The fire started on 26 January 2026 in Soa, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 191th largest in Eastern since 2016 (of 263 with a page). Number 245 in Sierra Leone in 2026, of 305.
The power measured by the satellite is low (6.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,138ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 26 Jan 2026 – 31 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 26 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 21
- in a single hotspot: 6 MW
- Energy released
- 78MW
- 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
36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 231 ha in 2016, 20 ha in 2017, 344 ha in 2022, 89 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 406 ha that had burned before.
- 344 ha Soa fire, January 2022 3,810 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 231 ha Soa fire, January 2016 1,211 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 89 ha Soa fire, December 2024 1,664 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Gbane Kandor fire, February 2017 2,879 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Soa where it started1,145 ha reached on 26 Jan2.2 %
-
1 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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 28 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 166 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 121: 8.1 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 · 21Every 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 Soa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 January 2026 and 31 January 2026: 6 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 1,138 hectares (11.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Soa (1,145 ha, 2.2 %); Gbane Kandor (1 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.