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Tondon fire, 16 April 2018 Tondon

Out · last detection 29 Apr 2018, 14:54 UTC

The fire started on 16 April 2018 in Tondon, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,885 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 67th largest in Kindia since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 26 in Guinea in 2018, of 107.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tondon · 2016Falessade · 2017Tondon · 2016Bangouya · 2017

Burnt area
3,885ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
16 Apr 2018 – 2 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
16 Apr
2018
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 264 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
999MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Apr2 May
29 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

16 Apr 2018 · 48 MW · 2 18 Apr 2018 · 65 MW · 4 21 Apr 2018 · 148 MW · 3 22 Apr 2018 · 61 MW · 3 23 Apr 2018 · 8,004 MW · 122 25 Apr 2018 · 49 MW · 5 26 Apr 2018 · 566 MW · 14 28 Apr 2018 · 9 MW · 1 29 Apr 2018 · 40 MW · 5
16 Apr 21 Apr 23 Apr 26 Apr 29 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,177 ha in 2016, 1,398 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,046 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (39 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. Tondon where it started
    3,910 ha reached on 16 Apr
    4.5 %

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 area3.6 ha
Residents≈ 1,300

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.6 hectares of built-up land and about 1,300 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)
22 Apr 36.7 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Apr 37.3 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Apr 36.2 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Apr 36.1 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Apr 33.8 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Apr 33.8 °C 50 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
28 Apr 37.7 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Apr 36.1 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Apr 35.5 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 May 34.7 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 May 35.9 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 May after 34.7 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 May after 34.6 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 May after 33.5 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 May after 35.8 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Apr 2018
After · 9 May 2018

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 · 159Every 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 Tondon fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 April 2018 to 2 May 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 April 2018 to 26 April 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,885 hectares (38.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tondon (3,910 ha, 4.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 26 April 2018 → 2 May 2018.
  2. Start date: 22 April 2018 → 16 April 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 April 2018 to 26 April 2018. 159 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.