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Bélabo fire, 2 February 2023 Bélabo

Out · last detection 22 Feb 2023, 00:29 UTC

The fire started on 2 February 2023 in Bélabo, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,649 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in East since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 10 in Cameroon in 2023, of 270.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bélabo · 2019Bélabo · 2021Bélabo · 2023Bétaré-Oya · 2023

Burnt area
6,649ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
2 Feb 2023 – 21 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
2 Feb
2023
Heat detections
491
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
215MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Feb21 Feb
22 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Feb 2023 · 8 MW · 2 3 Feb 2023 · 62 MW · 6 4 Feb 2023 · 207 MW · 16 5 Feb 2023 · 15 MW · 10 6 Feb 2023 · 196 MW · 29 7 Feb 2023 · 42 MW · 16 8 Feb 2023 · 202 MW · 19 9 Feb 2023 · 41 MW · 15 11 Feb 2023 · 636 MW · 48 12 Feb 2023 · 342 MW · 53 13 Feb 2023 · 873 MW · 52 14 Feb 2023 · 387 MW · 42 15 Feb 2023 · 386 MW · 25 16 Feb 2023 · 148 MW · 27 17 Feb 2023 · 117 MW · 25 18 Feb 2023 · 147 MW · 20 19 Feb 2023 · 226 MW · 20 20 Feb 2023 · 235 MW · 14 21 Feb 2023 · 18 MW · 8 22 Feb 2023 · 5 MW · 3
2 Feb 5 Feb 8 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 18 Feb 21 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
32km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,407 ha in 2019, 1,918 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,690 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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. Bélabo where it started
    6,697 ha reached on 26 Jan
    1.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Feb 31.9 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Feb 32.9 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Feb 35.3 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Feb 34.1 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Feb 33.9 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Feb 34.1 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Feb 34.0 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Feb 33.3 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Feb 34.7 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Feb 34.4 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Feb 35.3 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Feb 34.2 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Feb 34.4 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Feb 33.8 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Feb 32.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Feb 33.8 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Feb 34.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Feb 34.6 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Feb 33.5 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Feb 35.2 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Feb after 34.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Feb after 34.0 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Feb after 34.7 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Feb after 32.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Feb after 33.5 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Feb after 35.3 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Feb after 33.4 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Mar after 34.1 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Mar after 35.6 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Mar after 32.4 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jan 2023
After · 28 Feb 2023

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 · 491Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bélabo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 February 2023 and 21 February 2023: 20 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 6,649 hectares (66.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bélabo (6,697 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 32 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 Cameroon (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. 491 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 2025, 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.