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Fitri fire, 11 October 2025 Fitri

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2025, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2025 in Fitri, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,716 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Batha since 2016 (of 135 with a page). Number 66 in Chad in 2025, of 274.

Compare with…
Burnt area
4,716ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
11 Oct 2025 – 27 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
11 Oct
2025
Heat detections
163
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
109MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct27 Oct
28 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2025 · 8 MW · 1 12 Oct 2025 · 14 MW · 2 13 Oct 2025 · 15 MW · 3 14 Oct 2025 · 13 MW · 4 16 Oct 2025 · 52 MW · 13 17 Oct 2025 · 47 MW · 6 18 Oct 2025 · 279 MW · 36 19 Oct 2025 · 250 MW · 28 20 Oct 2025 · 370 MW · 25 21 Oct 2025 · 46 MW · 5 22 Oct 2025 · 567 MW · 27 23 Oct 2025 · 48 MW · 5 24 Oct 2025 · 21 MW · 3 26 Oct 2025 · 1 MW · 1 27 Oct 2025 · 4 MW · 1 28 Oct 2025 · 12 MW · 3
11 Oct 14 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 28 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high
34km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,533 ha in 2016, 2,963 ha in 2017, 191 ha in 2018, 1,080 ha in 2019, 1,902 ha in 2020, 1,153 ha in 2021, 2,323 ha in 2022, 965 ha in 2023, 73 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,720 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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

  1. Fitri where it started
    4,741 ha reached on 11 Oct
    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 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
16 Oct 38.1 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Oct 38.2 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Oct 39.5 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Oct 40.3 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Oct 38.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct 39.0 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Oct 39.9 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Oct 40.0 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Oct 40.4 °C 12 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Oct 40.4 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Oct 39.1 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Oct 39.3 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Oct after 39.9 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Oct after 40.0 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Oct after 40.0 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2025
After · 3 Nov 2025

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 19 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10141 µg/m³
Optical depth0.42
14151617181920212223
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 · 163Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Chad ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Fitri fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2025 to 27 October 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 October 2025 to 20 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,716 hectares (47.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Fitri (4,741 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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

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 16 October 2025 to 20 October 2025. 163 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 ADM2 (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.