Burned area
satellite only7,071ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 5 Feb 2023 – 13 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CF · Central African Republic · –
Koudou-Bégo fire, February 2023 Koudou-Bégo, Vassako
Out · last detection 11 Feb 2023, 11:39 UTC
The fire started on 5 February 2023 in Koudou-Bégo, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,071 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 10th largest in Ouaka since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 29 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 58.
Use this data
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only9days
5 Feb 2023 to 13 Feb 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 11 Feb 2023, 11:39 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only5 Feb 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 5 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only186
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 120 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 5 Feb 2023 – 13 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,856MW
Total radiative power on 6 February 2023; hotspots that day: 94.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 6 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model54.0FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 5 Feb 2023, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model40.2°C · 10% RH
High of 40.2 °C and minimum humidity of 10% on 12 February 2023; gusts of 35 km/h on 10 February 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 5 Feb 2023 – 13 Feb 2023
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 7,071 ha
- Dates
- 5 Feb 2023 – 13 Feb 2023
- Name
- Koudou-Bégo
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/koudou-bego-2023-02?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire koudou-bego-2023-02.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-02-05 | 6 | 137 | 39.1 | 20.2 | 8 | 12.6 | 23.8 | 0 | 54 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-06 | 94 | 1,856 | 39.2 | 20.7 | 9 | 11.9 | 28.1 | 0 | 53.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-07 | 57 | 187 | 37.9 | 20.3 | 9 | 13.9 | 34.2 | 0 | 56.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-08 | 11 | 48 | 37.8 | 21.2 | 9 | 11.9 | 28.8 | 0 | 54.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-09 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 21.4 | 11 | 13.3 | 31.7 | 0 | 56.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-10 | 17 | 223 | 38 | 22.5 | 10 | 14.4 | 34.9 | 0 | 58.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-11 | 1 | 6 | 39.6 | 21.7 | 11 | 11.9 | 27.7 | 0 | 55.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-12 | 0 | 0 | 40.2 | 23.1 | 10 | 13.4 | 31.7 | 0 | 57.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-13 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 24.3 | 18 | 13 | 34.2 | 0 | 52.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-02-14 | 0 | 0 | 37.1 | 23 | 21 | 10.8 | 22 | 0 | 46.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-15 | 0 | 0 | 37.7 | 21.5 | 13 | 16.2 | 29.2 | 0 | 53.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-16 | 0 | 0 | 35.6 | 22 | 13 | 14.2 | 33.8 | 0 | 51.2 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-17 | 0 | 0 | 35.7 | 20.8 | 13 | 14.4 | 34.2 | 0 | 51.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-18 | 0 | 0 | 37.5 | 20.2 | 11 | 13.5 | 32 | 0 | 51.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-19 | 0 | 0 | 38.8 | 22.2 | 10 | 13.8 | 33.8 | 0 | 54.2 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-20 | 0 | 0 | 39.1 | 21.3 | 13 | 12.4 | 25.2 | 0 | 52.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-21 | 0 | 0 | 39.5 | 23.1 | 12 | 17 | 37.4 | 0 | 58.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-22 | 0 | 0 | 39.8 | 23 | 12 | 14 | 34.6 | 0 | 55.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-02-23 | 0 | 0 | 38.6 | 24.2 | 15 | 13.3 | 28.4 | 0 | 54.7 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 7,071ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 5 Feb 2023 – 13 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 5 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 186
- in a single hotspot: 120 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 410MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
5 Feb13 Feb
11 Feb 2023
How it evolved, day by day
6 Feb
10 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
40°high
35km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,524 ha in 2016, 1,476 ha in 2017, 3,521 ha in 2018, 2,388 ha in 2019, 1,495 ha in 2020, 935 ha in 2021, 1,992 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,292 ha that had burned before.
- 373 ha Koudou-Bégo fire, January 2020 11,849 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 351 ha Koudou-Bégo fire, January 2021 6,487 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 217 ha Koudou-Bégo fire, January 2019 5,059 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Koudou-Bégo where it started4,528 ha reached on 5 Feb0.4 %
-
2,591 ha reached on 5 Feb0.1 %
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 2025Built-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)
Started with Very dry air: 42 % of the area in Central African Republic 60 days without rain: 30 % of the area in Central African Republic
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Feb | 39.1 °C | 8 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Feb | 39.2 °C | 9 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Feb | 37.9 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Feb | 37.8 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Feb | 37.9 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 10 Feb | 38.0 °C | 10 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 11 Feb | 39.6 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 12 Feb | 40.2 °C | 10 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 13 Feb | 37.9 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Feb after | 37.1 °C | 21 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 Feb after | 37.7 °C | 13 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 16 Feb after | 35.6 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 17 Feb after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Feb after | 37.5 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 19 Feb after | 38.8 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Feb after | 39.1 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 21 Feb after | 39.5 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 22 Feb after | 39.8 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 23 Feb after | 38.6 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 54.0, a minimum humidity of 8% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 44.
FWI at the start
54.0
Minimum humidity
8 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Koudou-Bégo fire, February 2023
7,071 ha
9 days
FWI 54.0
Min. humidity 8 %
Vassako fire, January 2025
8,184 ha
20 days
FWI 53.5
Min. humidity 8 %
127 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Vassako fire, January 2017
6,057 ha
7 days
FWI 54.7
Min. humidity 8 %
54 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Samba-Boungou fire, January 2024
5,412 ha
19 days
FWI 53.0
Min. humidity 9 %
82 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Samba-Boungou fire, February 2022
6,235 ha
9 days
FWI 53.9
Min. humidity 10 %
82 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Ouadda fire, January 2017
5,555 ha
6 days
FWI 53.6
Min. humidity 9 %
159 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 11 days
- median duration
- 6,198 ha
- median area
- 11 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 3.8 mm
- rain at the end (median; 2 of 44 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (7,071 ha against a median of 6,198 ha) and lasted 9 days, against 11 days.
In 42 of 44, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.8 mm.
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
35km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 13 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 2 of 44, with a median of 3.8 mm.
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 29 Jan 2023
After · 20 Feb 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 7 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 184 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 111: 7.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak184 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10264 µg/m³
Optical depth0.77
WHO 15
3 Feb6 Feb9 Feb12 Feb15 Feb
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 · 186Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Koudou-Bégo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 February 2023 to 13 February 2023 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 February 2023 to 8 February 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,071 hectares (70.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Koudou-Bégo (4,528 ha, 0.4 %); Vassako (2,591 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.
- 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: 44. Their median duration was 11 days and their median area 6,198 ha; 11 % went past 10,000 ha. In 42 of 44, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.8 mm.
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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 5 February 2023 to 8 February 2023. 186 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.
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.