How long did the Djema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 December 2025 to 9 February 2026 (51 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2025 to 4 February 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 623,165 hectares (6,231.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Djema (481,243 ha, 13 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2025-12-21 → 2026-02-09

Djema fire, 21 December 2025 Djema

Out · last detection 9 Feb 2026, 00:27 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2025 in Djema, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 51 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 623,165 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the largest fire in Haut-Mbomou since 2016 (of 298 with a page). The largest in Central African Republic in 2025, of 144.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2018 Djema · 2018 Djema · 2019 Djema · 2016

Burnt area: 623,165ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 51days; 21 Dec 2025 – 9 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 21 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 21,295; in a single hotspot: 161 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.7GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec9 Feb

Play back 9 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 29 Dec 6 Jan 14 Jan 18 Jan 22 Jan 30 Jan 7 Feb

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

45km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9 times the area of London (6,232 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

481,243 ha reached on 21 Dec

13 %

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 area1.3 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
28 Dec	33.7 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Very high 47
29 Dec	32.8 °C	11 %	20 km/h	Very high 43
30 Dec	32.2 °C	14 %	29 km/h	Very high 44
31 Dec	31.0 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Very high 49
1 Jan	33.3 °C	11 %	32 km/h	Very high 46
2 Jan	34.6 °C	15 %	34 km/h	Very high 48
3 Jan	34.0 °C	22 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
4 Jan	34.4 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Very high 50
5 Jan	34.5 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Very high 48
6 Jan	34.3 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Very high 49
7 Jan	34.1 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Very high 49
8 Jan	34.9 °C	15 %	39 km/h	Extreme 50
9 Jan	34.8 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
10 Jan	33.3 °C	18 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
11 Jan	33.7 °C	17 %	37 km/h	Extreme 51
12 Jan	34.2 °C	17 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
13 Jan	33.8 °C	17 %	42 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Jan	32.6 °C	18 %	45 km/h	Extreme 55
15 Jan	32.7 °C	17 %	43 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Jan	32.4 °C	17 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
17 Jan	34.6 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Very high 48
18 Jan	34.5 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Very high 50
19 Jan	34.9 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Jan	35.1 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Extreme 51
21 Jan	35.8 °C	17 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
22 Jan	36.1 °C	19 %	29 km/h	Very high 48
23 Jan	34.8 °C	22 %	24 km/h	Very high 43
24 Jan	36.1 °C	19 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
25 Jan	36.7 °C	12 %	43 km/h	Extreme 56
26 Jan	36.9 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
27 Jan	36.4 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
28 Jan	34.8 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
29 Jan	34.6 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
30 Jan	35.5 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
31 Jan	35.9 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
1 Feb	33.4 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 48
2 Feb	34.7 °C	14 %	24 km/h	Very high 46
3 Feb	36.0 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
4 Feb	36.0 °C	12 %	46 km/h	Extreme 58
5 Feb	36.5 °C	13 %	40 km/h	Extreme 57
6 Feb	33.6 °C	23 %	24 km/h	Very high 43
7 Feb	35.6 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Very high 49
8 Feb	35.5 °C	11 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Feb	34.2 °C	17 %	31 km/h	Very high 50
10 Feb after	32.5 °C	23 %	27 km/h	Very high 43
11 Feb after	34.7 °C	20 %	28 km/h	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Dec 2025

After · 16 Feb 2026

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 16 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³

Days over the guideline32 days

PM10117 µg/m³

Optical depth1.09

WHO 15

262728293031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234

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 · 21,295Every 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 2025 to 9 February 2026 (51 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2025 to 4 February 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 623,165 hectares (6,231.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Djema (481,243 ha, 13 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 10 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 December 2025 to 4 February 2026. 21,295 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