How long did the Kentzou fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 February 2023 to 24 February 2023 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 February 2023 to 21 February 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,431 hectares (64.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kentzou (6,215 ha, 6.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CM · Cameroon · 2023-02-10 → 2023-02-24

Kentzou fire, 10 February 2023 Kentzou

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2023, 12:35 UTC

The fire started on 10 February 2023 in Kentzou, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,431 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in East since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 12 in Cameroon in 2023, of 270.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kentzou · 2018 Kentzou · 2021 Kentzou · 2016 Kentzou · 2020

Burnt area: 6,431ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 10 Feb 2023 – 24 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 10 Feb; 2023
Heat detections: 233; in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 196MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Feb24 Feb

Play back 24 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 18 Feb 20 Feb 24 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

36°high

44km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,903 ha in 2016, 1,283 ha in 2018, 1,954 ha in 2020, 1,275 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,326 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (64 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

Kentzou where it started

6,215 ha reached on 10 Feb

6.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.58 ha

Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.58 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
10 Feb	34.6 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
11 Feb	34.4 °C	20 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Feb	35.9 °C	18 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Feb	33.2 °C	26 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Feb	33.8 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
15 Feb	33.3 °C	19 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Feb	32.0 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Feb	33.4 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Feb	33.9 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
19 Feb	34.1 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Feb	34.1 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Feb	33.5 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Feb	32.4 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Feb	32.2 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
24 Feb	33.6 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Feb after	31.4 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Feb after	31.6 °C	45 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 30
27 Feb after	33.1 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Feb after	32.9 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Mar after	32.7 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Mar after	33.3 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Mar after	33.0 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Mar after	33.1 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Mar after	34.0 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Mar after	34.0 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Feb 2023

After · 3 Mar 2023

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 20 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 561 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 304: 20 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak561 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10803 µg/m³

Optical depth1.81

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 233Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kentzou fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 February 2023 to 24 February 2023 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 February 2023 to 21 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,431 hectares (64.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kentzou (6,215 ha, 6.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 21 February 2023 → 24 February 2023.
26 October 2026 Start date: 11 February 2023 → 10 February 2023.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 February 2023 to 21 February 2023. 233 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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