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Guiffa fire, February 2023 Guiffa

Out · last detection 22 Feb 2023, 11:33 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2023 in Guiffa, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,876 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Kémo since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 39 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 53.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guiffa · 2026Tilo · 2026Dékoa · 2023Dékoa · 2016

Burnt area
5,876ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
4 Feb 2023 – 22 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
4 Feb
2023
Heat detections
347
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
316MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb22 Feb
22 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Feb 2023 · 364 MW · 20 5 Feb 2023 · 1,015 MW · 27 6 Feb 2023 · 20 MW · 5 7 Feb 2023 · 201 MW · 11 8 Feb 2023 · 15 MW · 1 9 Feb 2023 · 75 MW · 12 10 Feb 2023 · 6 MW · 1 11 Feb 2023 · 145 MW · 6 12 Feb 2023 · 557 MW · 40 13 Feb 2023 · 60 MW · 7 14 Feb 2023 · 375 MW · 23 15 Feb 2023 · 1,505 MW · 54 16 Feb 2023 · 250 MW · 21 17 Feb 2023 · 101 MW · 7 18 Feb 2023 · 451 MW · 43 19 Feb 2023 · 212 MW · 38 20 Feb 2023 · 414 MW · 17 21 Feb 2023 · 192 MW · 9 22 Feb 2023 · 55 MW · 5
4 Feb 7 Feb 10 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 16 Feb 19 Feb 22 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

39°high
42km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,052 ha in 2016, 838 ha in 2017, 1,343 ha in 2019, 953 ha in 2020, 1,788 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,519 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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. Guiffa where it started
    5,914 ha reached on 4 Feb
    3.9 %

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)
4 Feb 37.5 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Feb 37.9 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Feb 38.0 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Feb 36.5 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Feb 36.4 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Feb 36.6 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Feb 37.1 °C 16 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Feb 38.2 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Feb 38.6 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Feb 36.8 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Feb 36.6 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Feb 36.5 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Feb 35.1 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Feb 34.6 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Feb 36.2 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Feb 36.8 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Feb 37.1 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Feb 38.2 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Feb 39.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Feb after 35.6 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Feb after 36.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45
25 Feb after 35.7 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Feb after 36.7 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Feb after 36.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Feb after 36.0 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Mar after 34.9 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
2 Mar after 35.7 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
3 Mar after 36.2 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Mar after 37.2 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jan 2023
After · 1 Mar 2023

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 · 347Every 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 Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guiffa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2023 to 22 February 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2023 to 22 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,876 hectares (58.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guiffa (5,914 ha, 3.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 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

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 6 February 2023 to 22 February 2023. 347 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 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.