How long did the Carnot fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 December 2025 to 29 December 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 December 2025 to 22 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,911 hectares (79.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Carnot (7,965 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.

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 · 2025-12-08 → 2025-12-29

Carnot fire, December 2025 Carnot

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2025, 12:58 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2025 in Carnot, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,911 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 71 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 145.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 7,911ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 8 Dec 2025 – 29 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 8 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 203; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 63MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec29 Dec

Play back 29 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

8 Dec 12 Dec 15 Dec 18 Dec 21 Dec 26 Dec

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

35km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 242 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (79 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

Carnot where it started

7,965 ha reached on 8 Dec

2.1 %

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 area5.1 ha

Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.1 hectares of built-up land and about 700 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)
8 Dec	32.8 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 Dec	33.1 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
10 Dec	34.2 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
11 Dec	31.9 °C	36 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Dec	33.1 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
13 Dec	34.1 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Dec	35.3 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Dec	36.2 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Dec	33.8 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Dec	33.3 °C	21 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Dec	31.1 °C	38 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Dec	34.0 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Dec	34.7 °C	23 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Dec	35.6 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Dec	34.2 °C	24 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
23 Dec	33.2 °C	21 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Dec	31.0 °C	41 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Dec	34.3 °C	27 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
26 Dec	35.5 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Dec	34.8 °C	23 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Dec	33.8 °C	25 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Dec	32.7 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
30 Dec after	33.2 °C	39 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
31 Dec after	34.1 °C	33 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Jan after	34.5 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Jan after	35.3 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Jan after	32.2 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Jan after	33.3 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Jan after	35.8 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Jan after	36.2 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
7 Jan after	33.4 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Jan after	32.5 °C	24 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Dec 2025

After · 5 Jan 2026

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 17 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³

Days over the guideline26 days

PM1090 µg/m³

Optical depth0.75

WHO 15

6789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311

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 · 203Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Carnot fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 December 2025 to 29 December 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 December 2025 to 22 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,911 hectares (79.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Carnot (7,965 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
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

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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 9 December 2025 to 22 December 2025. 203 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 (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