How long did the Djema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 December 2018 to 12 January 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2018 to 12 January 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,438 hectares (134.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Djema (13,508 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2018-12-21 → 2019-01-12

Djema fire, 21 December 2018 Djema

Out · last detection 12 Jan 2019, 23:31 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2018 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,438 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 93th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 25 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2016 Tambura · 2016 Djema · 2018 Djema · 2025

Burnt area: 13,438ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 21 Dec 2018 – 12 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 21 Dec; 2018
Heat detections: 512; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 135MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec12 Jan

Play back 12 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 25 Dec 30 Dec 3 Jan 7 Jan 10 Jan 11 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

38°high

42km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,731 ha in 2016, 1,850 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,370 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.5% of the area of London (134 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

Djema where it started

13,508 ha reached on 21 Dec

0.4 %

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	Danger (FWI)
21 Dec	34.5 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Very high 47
22 Dec	33.9 °C	18 %	39 km/h	Very high 46
23 Dec	33.9 °C	17 %	42 km/h	Very high 48
24 Dec	34.1 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Very high 47
25 Dec	35.0 °C	17 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
26 Dec	35.8 °C	18 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
27 Dec	35.9 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
28 Dec	36.0 °C	19 %	31 km/h	Very high 44
29 Dec	35.8 °C	18 %	32 km/h	Very high 44
30 Dec	35.6 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Very high 49
31 Dec	34.2 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Very high 49
1 Jan	35.3 °C	17 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
2 Jan	35.6 °C	22 %	30 km/h	Very high 41
3 Jan	36.4 °C	18 %	41 km/h	Very high 47
4 Jan	36.1 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Very high 50
5 Jan	34.2 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 46
6 Jan	34.7 °C	22 %	30 km/h	Very high 43
7 Jan	35.3 °C	16 %	32 km/h	Very high 44
8 Jan	35.0 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
9 Jan	35.2 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
10 Jan	35.9 °C	15 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
11 Jan	36.9 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Very high 49
12 Jan	37.5 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Very high 49
13 Jan after	37.3 °C	14 %	22 km/h	Very high 42
14 Jan after	34.7 °C	25 %	35 km/h	Very high 44
15 Jan after	34.3 °C	31 %	29 km/h	Very high 40
16 Jan after	35.8 °C	20 %	31 km/h	Very high 38
17 Jan after	36.3 °C	12 %	29 km/h	Very high 47
18 Jan after	35.9 °C	10 %	26 km/h	Very high 50
19 Jan after	36.7 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Very high 50
20 Jan after	37.1 °C	10 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
21 Jan after	37.4 °C	8 %	30 km/h	Extreme 50
22 Jan after	37.7 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Dec 2018

After · 19 Jan 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 · 512Every 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 Djema fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 December 2018 to 12 January 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2018 to 12 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,438 hectares (134.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Djema (13,508 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 December 2018 to 12 January 2019. 512 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