How long did the Bélabo fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 January 2025 and 10 February 2025: 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 3,534 hectares (35.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bélabo (3,559 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

CM · Cameroon · 2025-01-22 → 2025-02-10

Bélabo fire, 22 January 2025 Bélabo

Out · last detection 10 Feb 2025, 11:51 UTC

The fire started on 22 January 2025 in Bélabo, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,534 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 40th largest in East since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 60 in Cameroon in 2025, of 396.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bélabo · 2023 Bélabo · 2019 Bélabo · 2020 Bélabo · 2021

Burnt area: 3,534ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 22 Jan 2025 – 10 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 22 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 463; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 91MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jan10 Feb

Play back 10 Feb 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jan 25 Jan 27 Jan 28 Jan 31 Jan 3 Feb 6 Feb 9 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

36°high

28km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,163 ha in 2019, 1,126 ha in 2020, 885 ha in 2021, 2,553 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,560 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Bélabo where it started

3,559 ha reached on 16 Jan

0.5 %

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 2025

Built-up area10 ha

Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 10 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (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)
22 Jan	31.0 °C	46 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Jan	34.8 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Jan	33.7 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Jan	33.2 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Jan	32.9 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Jan	33.8 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Jan	33.1 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Jan	32.9 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Jan	34.1 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
31 Jan	32.9 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Feb	33.0 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Feb	33.2 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
3 Feb	35.4 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Feb	35.3 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Feb	33.3 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
6 Feb	35.8 °C	18 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Feb	33.7 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Feb	32.9 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Feb	34.6 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Feb	34.7 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Feb after	33.8 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Feb after	34.4 °C	16 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Feb after	34.6 °C	17 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Feb after	33.3 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Feb after	34.1 °C	22 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
16 Feb after	34.1 °C	17 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Feb after	35.1 °C	17 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Feb after	35.5 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Feb after	32.4 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Feb after	33.5 °C	33 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Jan 2025

After · 17 Feb 2025

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 12 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 140 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak140 µg/m³

Days over the guideline25 days

PM10179 µg/m³

Optical depth1.32

WHO 15

20212223242526272829303112345678910111213

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 463Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bélabo fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 January 2025 and 10 February 2025: 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 3,534 hectares (35.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bélabo (3,559 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 463 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.

Where it burned