How long did the Bouca Bobo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 February 2019 to 24 February 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 February 2019 to 17 February 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,498 hectares (55.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bouca Bobo (5,396 ha, 1.7 %); Fafa Boungou (139 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 39 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2019-02-06 → 2019-02-24

Bouca Bobo fire, February 2019 Bouca Bobo, Fafa Boungou

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2019, 12:28 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2019 in Bouca Bobo, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,498 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 27th largest in Ouham since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 58 in Central African Republic in 2019, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bouca Bobo · 2026 Bouca Bobo · 2016 Bouca Bobo · 2017 Ouham Fafa · 2026

Burnt area: 5,498ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 6 Feb 2019 – 24 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 6 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 258; in a single hotspot: 117 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 278MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb24 Feb

Play back 24 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 9 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 19 Feb 24 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

39°high

39km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 25 Feb.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,746 ha in 2016, 4,256 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,703 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

Bouca Bobo where it started

5,396 ha reached on 6 Feb

1.7 %
Fafa Boungou

139 ha reached on 15 Feb

0.0 %

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 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)
6 Feb	34.1 °C	15 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
7 Feb	34.2 °C	11 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
8 Feb	34.1 °C	13 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
9 Feb	35.8 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
10 Feb	37.4 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
11 Feb	35.5 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Feb	36.8 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Feb	36.1 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
14 Feb	35.9 °C	14 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
15 Feb	35.6 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
16 Feb	34.9 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
17 Feb	35.7 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Feb	37.1 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
19 Feb	37.6 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
20 Feb	36.9 °C	15 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
21 Feb	38.6 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Feb	37.1 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Feb	35.8 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Feb	36.5 °C	38 %	39 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 40
25 Feb after	30.0 °C	54 %	25 km/h	4.9 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jan 2019

After · 3 Mar 2019

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.

Detections table · 258Every 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 Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bouca Bobo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 February 2019 to 24 February 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 February 2019 to 17 February 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,498 hectares (55.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bouca Bobo (5,396 ha, 1.7 %); Fafa Boungou (139 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 39 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

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

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 February 2019 to 17 February 2019. 258 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 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.

Where it burned