How long did the Sunyani fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 January 2025 and 11 February 2025: 13 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 2,553 hectares (25.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sunyani (2,570 ha, 5.0 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

GH · Ghana · 2025-01-30 → 2025-02-11

Sunyani fire, January 2025 Sunyani

Out · last detection 12 Feb 2025, 01:50 UTC

The fire started on 30 January 2025 in Sunyani, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,553 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Bono since 2016 (of 51 with a page). Number 98 in Ghana in 2025, of 144.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.6 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: 2,553ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 30 Jan 2025 – 11 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 226; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Energy released: 822MW; sum of detected power

Play back 12 Feb 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jan11 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

3012345678101112

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 38 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

Sunyani where it started

2,570 ha reached on 23 Jan

5.0 %

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.

↔

Before · 23 Jan 2025

After · 18 Feb 2025

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 6 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 100: 6.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak159 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10317 µg/m³

Optical depth1.97

WHO 15

282930311234567891011121314

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 226Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sunyani fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 January 2025 and 11 February 2025: 13 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 2,553 hectares (25.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sunyani (2,570 ha, 5.0 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.

Emergency number: 112

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 4.0 International (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.

Where it burned