Lagdo fire, January 2023 Lagdo
The fire started on 29 January 2023 in Lagdo, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,752 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 464th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 77 in Cameroon in 2023, of 269.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lagdo · 2021Lagdo · 2019Lagdo · 2022Lagdo · 2020
- Burnt area
- 1,752ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 29 Jan 2023 – 8 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 29 Jan
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 72 MW
- Average daily power
- 112MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 563 ha in 2019, 327 ha in 2020, 927 ha in 2021, 519 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,583 ha that had burned before.
- 927 ha Lagdo fire, January 2021 1,531 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 563 ha Lagdo fire, January 2019 1,558 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 519 ha Lagdo fire, January 2022 2,186 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 327 ha Lagdo fire, February 2020 1,703 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
-
Lagdo where it started1,763 ha reached on 29 Jan0.8 %
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 3 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 56Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,160 haLagdo14 February 2026 · 10 days · 4 km away
- 3,883 haPoli26 January 2020 · 13 days · 7 km away
- 3,435 haPoli24 January 2026 · 21 days · 11 km away
- 3,421 haLagdo29 January 2026 · 20 days · 13 km away
- 4,911 haNgong3 January 2026 · 24 days · 38 km away
- 4,533 haTcholliré14 December 2025 · 17 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lagdo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 January 2023 to 8 February 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 February 2023 to 6 February 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,752 hectares (17.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lagdo (1,763 ha, 0.8 %).
- 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 6 February 2023 → 8 February 2023.
- Start date: 4 February 2023 → 29 January 2023.
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 4 February 2023 to 6 February 2023. 56 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.