Sotouboua fire, January 2019 Sotouboua
The fire started on 18 January 2019 in Sotouboua, Togo, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 65th largest in Centrale since 2016 (of 119 with a page). Number 18 in Togo in 2019, of 31.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.7 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
- 1,253ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 18 Jan 2019 – 24 Jan 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- prefectures
- Started on
- 18 Jan
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 12 MW
- Energy released
- 83MW
- 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
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 269 ha in 2016, 855 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 979 ha that had burned before.
- 827 ha Sotouboua fire, December 2017 1,265 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 224 ha Sotouboua fire, December 2016 1,455 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 45 ha Sotouboua fire, December 2016 1,230 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha Sotouboua fire, December 2017 1,115 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Sotouboua where it started1,262 ha reached on 21 Jan0.4 %
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 · 22Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,745 haSotouboua16 December 2021 · 16 days · 3 km away
- 4,570 haSotouboua6 December 2022 · 15 days · 14 km away
- 3,563 haSotouboua16 December 2021 · 16 days · 18 km away
- 4,783 haBassar10 December 2021 · 18 days · 24 km away
- 36,837 haSotouboua26 November 2025 · 46 days · 27 km away
- 6,703 haBassar16 December 2016 · 16 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sotouboua fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 January 2019 to 24 January 2019 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 January 2019 to 22 January 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,253 hectares (12.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sotouboua (1,262 ha, 0.4 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Togo (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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.