How long did the Djema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 January 2020 to 22 January 2020 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 January 2020 to 15 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,567 hectares (115.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Djema (10,018 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 2020-01-06 → 2020-01-22

Djema fire, 6 January 2020 Djema

Out · last detection 22 Jan 2020, 12:01 UTC

The fire started on 6 January 2020 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,567 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 33 in Central African Republic in 2020, of 101.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 11,567ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 6 Jan 2020 – 22 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 6 Jan; 2020
Heat detections: 425; in a single hotspot: 145 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 212MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jan22 Jan

Play back 22 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jan 9 Jan 10 Jan 12 Jan 15 Jan 18 Jan 21 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

43km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 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: 4,844 ha in 2016, 1,790 ha in 2017, 6,096 ha in 2018, 743 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,924 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (116 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

10,018 ha reached on 6 Jan

0.3 %

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)
6 Jan	33.5 °C	16 %	36 km/h	Very high 47
7 Jan	34.1 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Very high 50
8 Jan	34.9 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
9 Jan	33.6 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 52
10 Jan	34.0 °C	13 %	39 km/h	Extreme 50
11 Jan	33.1 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Very high 50
12 Jan	31.7 °C	10 %	37 km/h	Extreme 50
13 Jan	33.1 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
14 Jan	35.3 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Very high 50
15 Jan	36.9 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 51
16 Jan	37.2 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
17 Jan	37.4 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
18 Jan	34.9 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Jan	33.4 °C	14 %	39 km/h	Extreme 56
20 Jan	33.0 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 56
21 Jan	32.8 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
22 Jan	32.1 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
23 Jan after	31.1 °C	11 %	44 km/h	Extreme 58
24 Jan after	31.3 °C	10 %	43 km/h	Extreme 59
25 Jan after	31.8 °C	10 %	43 km/h	Extreme 58
26 Jan after	32.6 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
27 Jan after	34.4 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
28 Jan after	36.0 °C	10 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
29 Jan after	35.2 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
30 Jan after	35.0 °C	11 %	39 km/h	Extreme 57
31 Jan after	34.4 °C	10 %	25 km/h	Extreme 54
1 Feb after	34.6 °C	11 %	30 km/h	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Dec 2019

After · 29 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 · 425Every 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 6 January 2020 to 22 January 2020 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 January 2020 to 15 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,567 hectares (115.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Djema (10,018 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 January 2020 to 15 January 2020. 425 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