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Djema fire, 8 December 2016 Djema

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2017, 22:59 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2016 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 36 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 58,624 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 6 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2018Djema · 2025Djema · 2019Djema · 2016

Burnt area
58,624ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
36days
8 Dec 2016 – 12 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
8 Dec
2016
Heat detections
2,978
in a single hotspot: 263 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
653MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec12 Jan
13 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

8 Dec 2016 · 665 MW · 54 9 Dec 2016 · 234 MW · 27 10 Dec 2016 · 74 MW · 14 11 Dec 2016 · 2,939 MW · 93 12 Dec 2016 · 513 MW · 45 13 Dec 2016 · 172 MW · 40 14 Dec 2016 · 3 MW · 2 15 Dec 2016 · 1,050 MW · 96 16 Dec 2016 · 1,307 MW · 116 17 Dec 2016 · 547 MW · 123 18 Dec 2016 · 2,501 MW · 196 19 Dec 2016 · 1,288 MW · 206 20 Dec 2016 · 587 MW · 147 21 Dec 2016 · 672 MW · 107 22 Dec 2016 · 219 MW · 42 23 Dec 2016 · 1,386 MW · 107 24 Dec 2016 · 775 MW · 98 25 Dec 2016 · 1,265 MW · 227 26 Dec 2016 · 880 MW · 153 27 Dec 2016 · 389 MW · 130 28 Dec 2016 · 1,348 MW · 138 29 Dec 2016 · 843 MW · 97 30 Dec 2016 · 680 MW · 100 31 Dec 2016 · 426 MW · 80 1 Jan 2017 · 93 MW · 29 2 Jan 2017 · 296 MW · 29 3 Jan 2017 · 198 MW · 19 4 Jan 2017 · 226 MW · 47 5 Jan 2017 · 455 MW · 87 6 Jan 2017 · 122 MW · 31 7 Jan 2017 · 199 MW · 52 8 Jan 2017 · 334 MW · 28 9 Jan 2017 · 98 MW · 24 10 Jan 2017 · 206 MW · 41 11 Jan 2017 · 500 MW · 76 12 Jan 2017 · 150 MW · 31 13 Jan 2017 · 508 MW · 46
8 Dec 11 Dec 14 Dec 20 Dec 26 Dec 1 Jan 7 Jan 13 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
47km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 37% of the area of London (586 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. Djema where it started
    58,939 ha reached on 8 Dec
    1.6 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
15 Dec 33.1 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Dec 33.9 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Dec 34.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Dec 34.6 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Dec 34.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec 34.9 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Dec 35.7 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec 35.7 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Dec 36.6 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Dec 36.3 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Dec 35.1 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Dec 35.1 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec 34.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Dec 35.6 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Dec 36.2 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Dec 36.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Jan 37.0 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jan 35.7 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Jan 35.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jan 35.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Jan 35.2 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Jan 36.9 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jan 37.3 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan 37.0 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan 36.1 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Jan 36.8 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan 37.4 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Jan 37.1 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Jan after 37.1 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jan after 37.4 °C 9 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jan after 38.3 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2016
After · 19 Jan 2017

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 · 2,978Every 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 Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Djema fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 December 2016 to 12 January 2017 (36 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 December 2016 to 5 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 58,624 hectares (586.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Djema (58,939 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 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

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 December 2016 to 5 January 2017. 2,978 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 2015, 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.