Tamale fire, 11 January 2022 Tamale, Mion
The fire started on 11 January 2022 in Tamale, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,401 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 159th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 262 with a page). Number 73 in Ghana in 2022, of 119.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,401ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 11 Jan 2022 – 27 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 11 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 76
- in a single hotspot: 39 MW
- Average daily power
- 55MW
- 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
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,308 ha in 2017, 933 ha in 2019, 1,184 ha in 2020, 106 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,062 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Tamale where it started2,304 ha reached on 11 Jan3.5 %
-
112 ha reached on 14 Jan0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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.
Detections table · 76Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,234 haTamaleJanuary 2024 · 13 days · 7 km away
- 80,705 haNorth East Gonja1 January 2026 · 47 days · 22 km away
- 5,581 haGushegu12 January 2026 · 21 days · 25 km away
- 5,932 haGusheguDecember 2018 · 18 days · 36 km away
- 6,795 haMion12 January 2026 · 19 days · 37 km away
- 7,527 haGushegu2 January 2020 · 23 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tamale fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 January 2022 to 27 January 2022 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2022 to 20 January 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,401 hectares (24.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tamale (2,304 ha, 3.5 %); Mion (112 ha, 0.0 %).
- 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 January 2022 to 20 January 2022. 76 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 2020, 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 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.