How long did the Koudou-Bégo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 January 2026 to 26 January 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,579 hectares (105.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Koudou-Bégo (10,654 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 37 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2026-01-11 → 2026-01-26

Koudou-Bégo fire, 11 January 2026 Koudou-Bégo

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2026, 00:27 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2026 in Koudou-Bégo, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,579 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Ouaka since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 47 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 161.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Koudou-Bégo · 2018 Koudou-Bégo · 2017 Koudou-Bégo · 2017 Koudou-Bégo · 2018

Burnt area: 10,579ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 11 Jan 2026 – 26 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 11 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 217; in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 140MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan26 Jan

Play back 24 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jan 12 Jan 13 Jan 15 Jan 18 Jan 20 Jan 22 Jan 24 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

39°high

37km/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

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,695 ha in 2016, 4,490 ha in 2017, 8,768 ha in 2018, 2,317 ha in 2019, 3,529 ha in 2020, 3,607 ha in 2021, 3,269 ha in 2022, 1,702 ha in 2024, 1,254 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,005 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (106 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

Koudou-Bégo where it started

10,654 ha reached on 11 Jan

0.9 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
11 Jan	35.4 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Jan	35.7 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Jan	37.0 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
14 Jan	37.2 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
15 Jan	36.3 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
16 Jan	35.1 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Jan	36.0 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
18 Jan	36.8 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
19 Jan	36.8 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
20 Jan	36.5 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Jan	37.2 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
22 Jan	36.1 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Jan	35.9 °C	33 %	26 km/h	1.3 mm	High 27
24 Jan	36.1 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Jan	37.7 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
26 Jan	39.1 °C	12 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
27 Jan after	37.8 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
28 Jan after	36.2 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
29 Jan after	37.1 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
30 Jan after	37.8 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
31 Jan after	36.8 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
1 Feb after	36.3 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Feb after	37.4 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
3 Feb after	37.7 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
4 Feb after	38.8 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
5 Feb after	37.7 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Jan 2026

After · 2 Feb 2026

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 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 129 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 71: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak129 µg/m³

Days over the guideline19 days

PM10138 µg/m³

Optical depth0.71

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 217Every 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 Central African Republic ›

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 11 January 2026 to 26 January 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,579 hectares (105.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Koudou-Bégo (10,654 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 37 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 January 2026 → 26 January 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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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?

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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 11 January 2026 to 19 January 2026. 217 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 (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.

Where it burned