Soyah fire, 18 February 2026 Soyah
The fire started on 18 February 2026 in Soyah, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,211 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 22th largest in Mamou since 2016 (of 74 with a page). Number 91 in Guinea in 2026, of 269.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Soyah · 2024Soyah · 2019Soyah · 2022Soyah · 2017
- Burnt area
- 3,211ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 18 Feb 2026 – 25 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 18 Feb
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 88
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 89MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 97 ha in 2016, 253 ha in 2017, 2,004 ha in 2019, 1,264 ha in 2020, 115 ha in 2021, 431 ha in 2022, 2,554 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,918 ha that had burned before.
- 1,989 ha Soyah fire, January 2024 2,597 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,114 ha Soyah fire, April 2019 2,337 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 431 ha Soyah fire, January 2022 2,102 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 60 ha Soyah fire, April 2017 5,583 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7 ha Soyah fire, February 2020 3,818 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
-
Soyah where it started3,231 ha reached on 18 Feb1.6 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Feb | 32.9 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Feb | 34.5 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Feb | 34.2 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Feb | 34.4 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Feb | 35.1 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Feb | 35.4 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Feb | 33.9 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Feb | 34.6 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Feb after | 33.1 °C | 25 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Feb after | 33.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Feb after | 32.1 °C | 26 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Mar after | 30.1 °C | 19 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Mar after | 29.9 °C | 27 % | 21 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Mar after | 34.2 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Mar after | 34.4 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Mar after | 35.2 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 6 Mar after | 34.9 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Mar after | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
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 18 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 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 · 88Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,583 haSoyahApril 2017 · 8 days · 9 km away
- 4,188 haMadina Oula16 April 2017 · 9 days · 14 km away
- 4,883 haSoyah14 February 2026 · 14 days · 15 km away
- 5,407 haSougueta9 April 2026 · 21 days · 17 km away
- 8,451 haSougueta14 April 2017 · 9 days · 19 km away
- 4,682 haKégnéko14 April 2026 · 15 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Soyah fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 February 2026 and 25 February 2026: 8 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 3,211 hectares (32.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Soyah (3,231 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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
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. 88 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.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.