How long did the Djema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 December 2019 to 12 January 2020 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 December 2019 to 5 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 62,054 hectares (620.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Djema (62,401 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 2019-12-24 → 2020-01-12

Djema fire, 24 December 2019 Djema

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2020, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2019 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 62,054 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 2 in Central African Republic in 2019, of 64.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2018 Djema · 2016 Djema · 2018 Djema · 2016

Burnt area: 62,054ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 24 Dec 2019 – 12 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 24 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 3,012; in a single hotspot: 351 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec12 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Dec 27 Dec 28 Dec 30 Dec 2 Jan 5 Jan 8 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

36°high

43km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 35,879 ha in 2016, 22,340 ha in 2017, 39,102 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 56,471 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 39% of the area of London (621 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

62,401 ha reached on 24 Dec

1.7 %

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 2020

Built-up area0.59 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.59 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (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)
24 Dec	35.1 °C	20 %	36 km/h	Very high 38
25 Dec	35.6 °C	18 %	37 km/h	Very high 40
26 Dec	34.5 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Very high 45
27 Dec	34.1 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Very high 44
28 Dec	33.7 °C	10 %	38 km/h	Very high 46
29 Dec	34.6 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Very high 45
30 Dec	35.6 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Very high 45
31 Dec	35.4 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
1 Jan	35.4 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
2 Jan	36.2 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
3 Jan	35.6 °C	20 %	41 km/h	Very high 46
4 Jan	33.7 °C	17 %	34 km/h	Very high 46
5 Jan	32.4 °C	17 %	34 km/h	Very high 46
6 Jan	33.8 °C	16 %	35 km/h	Very high 46
7 Jan	34.3 °C	15 %	42 km/h	Very high 50
8 Jan	35.2 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Extreme 51
9 Jan	33.9 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 53
10 Jan	34.4 °C	13 %	39 km/h	Extreme 50
11 Jan	33.5 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Very high 50
12 Jan	32.0 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Very high 50
13 Jan after	33.4 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
14 Jan after	35.5 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Very high 50
15 Jan after	37.2 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Jan after	37.5 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
17 Jan after	37.6 °C	11 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
18 Jan after	35.1 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Jan after	33.7 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
20 Jan after	33.4 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 57
21 Jan after	33.2 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
22 Jan after	32.4 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Dec 2019

After · 19 Jan 2020

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 · 3,012Every 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 24 December 2019 to 12 January 2020 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 December 2019 to 5 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 62,054 hectares (620.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Djema (62,401 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 43 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 December 2019 to 5 January 2020. 3,012 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