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Aboudéia fire, 9 December 2019 Aboudéia

Out · last detection 13 Dec 2019, 23:48 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2019 in Aboudéia, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,913 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 226th largest in Salamat since 2016 (of 574 with a page). Number 68 in Chad in 2019, of 154.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aboudéia · 2018Aboudéia · 2021Mangalmé · 2019

Burnt area
2,913ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
9 Dec 2019 – 13 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
9 Dec
2019
Heat detections
73
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
135MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec13 Dec
13 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Dec 2019 · 196 MW · 22 10 Dec 2019 · 178 MW · 26 11 Dec 2019 · 165 MW · 24 13 Dec 2019 · 1 MW · 1
9 Dec 10 Dec 11 Dec 13 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
30km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 358 ha in 2016, 22 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (29 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. Aboudéia where it started
    2,930 ha reached on 9 Dec
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
9 Dec 33.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Dec 32.8 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Dec 33.5 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Dec 33.5 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec 32.7 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Dec after 32.9 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Dec after 34.2 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Dec after 33.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec after 33.2 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Dec after 32.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Dec after 31.8 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec after 33.0 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Dec after 33.9 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Dec after 33.0 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Dec after 33.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Dec 2019
After · 20 Dec 2019

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 · 73Every 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 Chad ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aboudéia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 December 2019 and 13 December 2019: 5 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 2,913 hectares (29.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aboudéia (2,930 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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. 73 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 ADM2 (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.