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Thionthian fire, April 2021 Thionthian, Tarihoye

Out · last detection 12 Apr 2021, 14:22 UTC

The fire started on 6 April 2021 in Thionthian, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,023 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 43th largest in Kindia since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 15 in Guinea in 2021, of 111.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Thionthian · 2017Thionthian · 2016Thionthian · 2020Sogolon · 2017

Burnt area
5,023ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
6 Apr 2021 – 13 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
2
sub-prefectures
Started on
6 Apr
2021
Heat detections
196
in a single hotspot: 325 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Apr13 Apr
12 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Apr 2021 · 213 MW · 12 7 Apr 2021 · 938 MW · 33 8 Apr 2021 · 1,640 MW · 14 9 Apr 2021 · 33 MW · 1 10 Apr 2021 · 3,123 MW · 91 11 Apr 2021 · 717 MW · 20 12 Apr 2021 · 417 MW · 25
6 Apr 7 Apr 8 Apr 9 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr

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
29%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,184 ha in 2016, 3,435 ha in 2017, 926 ha in 2018, 1,267 ha in 2019, 1,007 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,161 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Thionthian where it started
    4,844 ha reached on 6 Apr
    7.6 %
  2. Tarihoye
    212 ha reached on 8 Apr
    0.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.8 ha
Residents≈ 600

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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

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)
6 Apr 36.4 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Apr 37.1 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 40
8 Apr 37.6 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Apr 35.9 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Apr 36.2 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Apr 37.1 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Apr 37.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Apr 36.4 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
14 Apr after 33.9 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 21
15 Apr after 35.2 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Apr after 36.7 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
17 Apr after 35.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Apr after 37.4 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Apr after 35.4 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Apr after 37.6 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Apr after 37.5 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Apr after 38.1 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Apr after 37.7 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 30 Mar 2021
After · 20 Apr 2021

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 · 196Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guinea ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Thionthian fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 April 2021 and 13 April 2021: 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 5,023 hectares (50.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Thionthian (4,844 ha, 7.6 %); Tarihoye (212 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

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

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.

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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. 196 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.