How long did the Djema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 January 2023 to 26 January 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 January 2023 to 20 January 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,883 hectares (88.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Djema (8,933 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 2023-01-11 → 2023-01-26

Djema fire, 11 January 2023 Djema

Out · last detection 26 Jan 2023, 11:39 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2023 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,883 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 140th largest in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). Number 15 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 53.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2016 Djema · 2020 Djema · 2021 Djema · 2019

Burnt area: 8,883ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 11 Jan 2023 – 26 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 11 Jan; 2023
Heat detections: 310; in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 182MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan26 Jan

Play back 26 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan 23 Jan 26 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

40km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,445 ha in 2016, 282 ha in 2017, 5,347 ha in 2018, 2,293 ha in 2019, 2,675 ha in 2020, 1,830 ha in 2021, 1,337 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,525 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (89 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

8,933 ha reached on 11 Jan

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
11 Jan	34.8 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
12 Jan	34.9 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Very high 48
13 Jan	35.2 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Jan	35.5 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
15 Jan	35.0 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
16 Jan	36.0 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Jan	35.8 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
18 Jan	36.0 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
19 Jan	36.6 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
20 Jan	37.4 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
21 Jan	37.6 °C	9 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
22 Jan	37.0 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Jan	36.3 °C	9 %	26 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Jan	37.9 °C	8 %	34 km/h	Extreme 55
25 Jan	36.1 °C	14 %	23 km/h	Extreme 50
26 Jan	36.9 °C	14 %	24 km/h	Very high 49
27 Jan after	38.2 °C	10 %	32 km/h	Extreme 54
28 Jan after	36.7 °C	11 %	27 km/h	Extreme 52
29 Jan after	37.8 °C	11 %	23 km/h	Extreme 51
30 Jan after	36.2 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Very high 48
31 Jan after	37.4 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Extreme 50
1 Feb after	37.0 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Very high 48
2 Feb after	36.0 °C	13 %	25 km/h	Extreme 53
3 Feb after	36.2 °C	9 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
4 Feb after	37.2 °C	7 %	37 km/h	Extreme 57
5 Feb after	38.2 °C	8 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Jan 2023

After · 2 Feb 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 22 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak117 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10169 µg/m³

Optical depth1.24

WHO 15

91011121314151617181920212223242526272829

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 310Every 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 11 January 2023 to 26 January 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 January 2023 to 20 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,883 hectares (88.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Djema (8,933 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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

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 12 January 2023 to 20 January 2023. 310 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 2025, 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