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Fouli fire, June 2022 Fouli, Kaya

Out · last detection 8 Jun 2022, 12:29 UTC

The fire started on 7 June 2022 in Fouli, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,509 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 28th largest in Lac since 2016 (of 44 with a page). Number 61 in Chad in 2022, of 102.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,509ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
7 Jun 2022 – 8 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
2
departments
Started on
7 Jun
2022
Heat detections
53
in a single hotspot: 260 MW
Danger at start
82
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
980MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jun8 Jun
8 Jun 2022

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jun 2022 · 1,904 MW · 45 8 Jun 2022 · 57 MW · 2
7 Jun 8 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 18 Jun.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,509 ha in 2016, 1,785 ha in 2017, 1,789 ha in 2018, 32 ha in 2019, 1,557 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,519 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. Fouli where it started
    2,354 ha reached on 2 Jun
    0.3 %
  2. 166 ha
    0.0 %

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.

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)
7 Jun 42.9 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
8 Jun 43.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
9 Jun after 41.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
10 Jun after 41.4 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 56
11 Jun after 39.2 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Jun after 42.4 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
13 Jun after 37.8 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Jun after 39.8 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 55
15 Jun after 38.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 40
16 Jun after 41.5 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Jun after 37.7 °C 30 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
18 Jun after 38.2 °C 32 % 51 km/h 2.3 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 May 2022
After · 15 Jun 2022

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 · 53Every 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 Fouli fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 June 2022 and 8 June 2022: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,509 hectares (25.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Fouli (2,354 ha, 0.3 %); Kaya (166 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 53 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.

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.