Bakassa fire, December 2025 Bakassa, Nana Markounda
The fire started on 30 December 2025 in Bakassa, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,316 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 9th largest in Ouham since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 61 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 145.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 9,316ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 30 Dec 2025 – 15 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 30 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 223
- in a single hotspot: 227 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 210MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,092 ha in 2016, 57 ha in 2017, 458 ha in 2020, 1,666 ha in 2021, 17 ha in 2022, 887 ha in 2024, 1,517 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,973 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Bakassa where it started7,456 ha reached on 30 Dec2.6 %
-
1,919 ha reached on 4 Jan0.4 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Dec | 36.7 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Dec | 37.1 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 1 Jan | 37.2 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Jan | 37.8 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Jan | 36.9 °C | 12 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 4 Jan | 37.5 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Jan | 37.9 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 6 Jan | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Jan | 38.3 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 8 Jan | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 9 Jan | 37.4 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Jan | 35.3 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 11 Jan | 35.4 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 12 Jan | 36.7 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 13 Jan | 38.0 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Jan | 37.9 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 15 Jan | 35.4 °C | 16 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Jan after | 36.6 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 17 Jan after | 36.8 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Jan after | 38.1 °C | 12 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 Jan after | 38.0 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Jan after | 38.5 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Jan after | 38.7 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Jan after | 38.3 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 24 Jan after | 37.4 °C | 13 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Jan after | 38.4 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 223Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bakassa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 December 2025 to 15 January 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 January 2026 to 15 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,316 hectares (93.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bakassa (7,456 ha, 2.6 %); Nana Markounda (1,919 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (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
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 January 2026 to 15 January 2026. 223 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.
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.