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Djema fire, 1 December 2017 Djema

Out · last detection 20 Dec 2017, 23:05 UTC

The fire started on 1 December 2017 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,539 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 11 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2016Djema · 2016Djema · 2024Djema · 2025

Burnt area
30,539ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
1 Dec 2017 – 19 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
1 Dec
2017
Heat detections
986
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
339MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Dec19 Dec
20 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

1 Dec 2017 · 177 MW · 33 2 Dec 2017 · 197 MW · 29 3 Dec 2017 · 103 MW · 16 4 Dec 2017 · 13 MW · 5 5 Dec 2017 · 41 MW · 9 6 Dec 2017 · 126 MW · 17 7 Dec 2017 · 91 MW · 33 8 Dec 2017 · 45 MW · 29 9 Dec 2017 · 106 MW · 27 10 Dec 2017 · 316 MW · 24 11 Dec 2017 · 585 MW · 72 12 Dec 2017 · 1,476 MW · 142 13 Dec 2017 · 1,235 MW · 149 14 Dec 2017 · 461 MW · 70 15 Dec 2017 · 121 MW · 26 16 Dec 2017 · 1,071 MW · 116 17 Dec 2017 · 315 MW · 92 18 Dec 2017 · 88 MW · 58 19 Dec 2017 · 189 MW · 30 20 Dec 2017 · 30 MW · 9
1 Dec 4 Dec 7 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 16 Dec 19 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
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21,198 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (305 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
    26,773 ha reached on 1 Dec
    0.7 %

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)
1 Dec 33.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Dec 32.7 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Dec 33.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Dec 34.4 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Dec 34.7 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Dec 34.9 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Dec 33.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Dec 33.2 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Dec 33.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Dec 34.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Dec 35.0 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Dec 35.6 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Dec 35.1 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Dec 34.9 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Dec 34.4 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Dec 34.0 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec 34.0 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Dec 34.8 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 35.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec after 35.8 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Dec after 36.1 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Dec after 36.5 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Dec after 36.8 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Dec after 35.7 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Dec after 34.1 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Dec after 33.7 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Dec after 34.2 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Dec after 36.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec after 36.3 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Nov 2017
After · 26 Dec 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 · 986Every 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 1 December 2017 to 19 December 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2017 to 19 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 30,539 hectares (305.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Djema (26,773 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 December 2017 to 19 December 2017. 986 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.