Burned area
satellite only2,429ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026 – 6 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BJ · Benin · –
Tanguiéta fire, 5 January 2026 Tanguiéta
Out · last detection 6 Jan 2026, 13:51 UTC
The fire started on 5 January 2026 in Tanguiéta, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,429 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 34 in Benin in 2026, of 114.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
5 Jan 2026 to 6 Jan 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 6 Jan 2026, 13:51 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only5 Jan 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only53
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 91 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026 – 6 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,086MW
Total radiative power on 5 January 2026; hotspots that day: 43.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model59.3FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model37.6°C · 13% RH
High of 37.6 °C and minimum humidity of 13% on 5 January 2026; gusts of 40 km/h on 5 January 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 5 Jan 2026 – 6 Jan 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 2,429 ha
- Dates
- 5 Jan 2026 – 6 Jan 2026
- Name
- Tanguiéta
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/tanguieta-2026-01-3?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire tanguieta-2026-01-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-05 | 43 | 1,086 | 37.6 | 23.5 | 13 | 17.1 | 39.6 | 0 | 59.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-01-06 | 10 | 28 | 37.4 | 22 | 9 | 14.9 | 34.9 | 0 | 56.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-01-07 | 0 | 0 | 37.6 | 21.8 | 18 | 9.9 | 21.2 | 0 | 48.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-01-08 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 21.1 | 13 | 12.9 | 32.4 | 0 | 52 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-09 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 22.6 | 10 | 17 | 37.4 | 0 | 57.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.7 | 22.6 | 13 | 14.6 | 33.1 | 0 | 54.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-11 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 21.1 | 13 | 14.4 | 33.1 | 0 | 54.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-12 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 20.2 | 16 | 11.1 | 28.4 | 0 | 49.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-01-13 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 21.5 | 15 | 11.2 | 31.3 | 0 | 49.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-01-14 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 21.5 | 14 | 11.7 | 29.2 | 0 | 50.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-15 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 21.4 | 15 | 11.1 | 25.6 | 0 | 50.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-01-16 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 22.3 | 13 | 11 | 29.5 | 0 | 50.4 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,429ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 5 Jan 2026 – 6 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 5 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 53
- in a single hotspot: 91 MW
- Danger at start
- 59
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 557MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
5 Jan6 Jan
6 Jan 2026
How it evolved, day by day
5 Jan
6 Jan
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
38°high
40km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 939 ha in 2017, 222 ha in 2018, 1,039 ha in 2019, 1,273 ha in 2020, 968 ha in 2021, 1,471 ha in 2022, 275 ha in 2023, 1,801 ha in 2024, 706 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,442 ha that had burned before.
- 1,801 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2024 56,864 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,375 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2022 8,489 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,039 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2019 2,218 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 968 ha Tanguiéta fire, January 2021 79,561 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 873 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2017 2,073 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 571 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2020 1,072 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 504 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2020 3,523 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 482 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2025 2,394 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
-
Tanguiéta where it started2,445 ha reached on 5 Jan0.4 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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)
Started with Very dry air: 49 % of the area in Benin 60 days without rain: 44 % of the area in Benin
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Jan | 37.6 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 6 Jan | 37.4 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 7 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 18 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 9 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 10 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 11 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 12 Jan after | 35.3 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 13 Jan after | 36.2 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 14 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 15 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 16 Jan after | 35.3 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 29 Dec 2025
After · 13 Jan 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 6 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak73 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10486 µg/m³
Optical depth0.66
WHO 15
3 Jan5 Jan7 Jan9 Jan
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 · 53Every 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
- 56,864 haTanguiéta24 November 2024 · 28 days · 14 km away
- 36,910 haTanguiéta23 November 2019 · 20 days · 18 km away
- 34,314 haTanguiéta13 December 2020 · 19 days · 26 km away
- 76,309 haTanguiéta5 January 2022 · 48 days · 27 km away
- 49,627 haTanguiéta24 November 2019 · 36 days · 28 km away
- 42,440 haTanguiéta22 November 2022 · 36 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tanguiéta fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 January 2026 and 6 January 2026: 2 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 2,429 hectares (24.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tanguiéta (2,445 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 53 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 2025, 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 (Public Domain). 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.