Tambakha fire, 24 January 2017 Tambakha
The fire started on 24 January 2017 in Tambakha, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,232 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 44th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 7 in Sierra Leone in 2017, of 207.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,232ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 24 Jan 2017 – 9 Feb 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 24 Jan
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 146
- in a single hotspot: 62 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 59MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 17 Feb.
This area had burned before
45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,939 ha in 2016.
- 1,164 ha Tambakha fire, January 2016 2,644 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 530 ha Tambakha fire, February 2016 1,497 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 246 ha Tambakha fire, January 2016 8,119 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
-
Tambakha where it started4,260 ha reached on 26 Jan1.7 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jan | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Feb | 34.8 °C | 26 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 2 Feb | 36.0 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Feb | 36.5 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Feb | 36.8 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Feb | 36.3 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 6 Feb | 36.4 °C | 11 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 Feb | 37.3 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 8 Feb | 37.1 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Feb | 36.7 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 10 Feb after | 34.9 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Feb after | 35.7 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 13 Feb after | 36.9 °C | 22 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Feb after | 36.3 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Feb after | 38.9 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Feb after | 35.5 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Feb after | 36.1 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 2.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
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 · 146Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,768 haKasunkoJanuary 2019 · 9 days · 10 km away
- 8,119 haTambakha24 January 2016 · 12 days · 11 km away
- 4,443 haKasunko3 February 2017 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 6,058 haKasunko22 January 2026 · 10 days · 14 km away
- 4,462 haTambakha26 January 2016 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 5,742 haTambakha6 February 2019 · 26 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tambakha fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 January 2017 to 9 February 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 January 2017 to 7 February 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,232 hectares (42.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tambakha (4,260 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 7 February 2017 → 9 February 2017.
- Start date: 31 January 2017 → 24 January 2017.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 January 2017 to 7 February 2017. 146 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 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 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.