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TD · Chad · →

Batha Est fire, January 2019 Batha Est

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2019, 12:05 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2019 in Batha Est, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,285 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 103th largest in Batha since 2016 (of 135 with a page). Number 113 in Chad in 2019, of 154.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,285ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
2 Jan 2019 – 3 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
2 Jan
2019
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Energy released
197MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan3 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

3

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

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 285 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Batha Est where it started
    2,307 ha reached on 3 Jan
    0.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2018
After · 10 Jan 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 · 58Every 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 Batha Est fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2019 and 3 January 2019: 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 2,285 hectares (22.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Batha Est (2,307 ha, 0.1 %).
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

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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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.