Skip to content
worldfires
TD · Chad · –

Haraze-Mangueigne fire, 1 January 2016 Haraze-Mangueigne

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2016, 11:59 UTC

The fire started on 1 January 2016 in Haraze-Mangueigne, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,052 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 425th largest in Salamat since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 209 in Chad in 2016, of 220.

Burnt area
2,052ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
1 Jan 2016 – 6 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
1 Jan
2016
Heat detections
48
in a single hotspot: 258 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
227MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jan6 Jan
6 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jan 2016 · 421 MW · 14 2 Jan 2016 · 605 MW · 24 3 Jan 2016 · 5 MW · 3 5 Jan 2016 · 88 MW · 6 6 Jan 2016 · 15 MW · 1
1 Jan 2 Jan 3 Jan 5 Jan 6 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Haraze-Mangueigne where it started
    2,068 ha reached on 1 Jan
    0.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)

Started with Very dry air: 54 % of the area in Chad 60 days without rain: 44 % of the area in Chad

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
1 Jan 35.4 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Jan 33.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
3 Jan 32.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Jan 33.9 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Jan 35.4 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Jan 37.2 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Jan after 37.8 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Jan after 37.0 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Jan after 36.9 °C 5 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
10 Jan after 35.8 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
11 Jan after 35.8 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
12 Jan after 35.7 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Jan after 35.2 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Jan after 34.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Jan after 35.0 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Jan after 35.7 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 53.9, a minimum humidity of 14% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 31.

FWI at the start 53.9
Minimum humidity 14 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Djourf Al Ahmar fire, January 2019
4,114 ha 6 days FWI 54.1 Min. humidity 14 % 131 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

6 days
median duration
2,952 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
—
rain at the end (median; 0 of 31 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (2,052 ha against a median of 2,952 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 6 days.

In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
42km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 6 Jan, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. None of its 31 twins had rain when they ended.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Dec 2015
After · 13 Jan 2016

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 · 48Every 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 Haraze-Mangueigne fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 January 2016 and 6 January 2016: 6 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 2,052 hectares (20.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Haraze-Mangueigne (2,068 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 31. Their median duration was 6 days and their median area 2,952 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

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.

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?

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 48 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 2015, 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.