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Lac Iro fire, 9 January 2024 Lac Iro

Out · last detection 12 Jan 2024, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2024 in Lac Iro, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,320 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 162th largest in Moyen-Chari since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 44 in Chad in 2024, of 71.

Burnt area
2,320ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
9 Jan 2024 – 12 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
9 Jan
2024
Heat detections
71
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Energy released
815MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jan 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan12 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

9101112

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,428 ha in 2016, 1,548 ha in 2018, 142 ha in 2020, 264 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,276 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lac Iro where it started
    2,332 ha reached on 5 Jan
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jan 2024
After · 19 Jan 2024

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 · 71Every 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 Lac Iro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2024 and 12 January 2024: 4 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 2,320 hectares (23.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lac Iro (2,332 ha, 0.1 %).
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.

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

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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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.