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CM · Cameroon · →

Lagdo fire, February 2023 Lagdo

Out · last detection 6 Feb 2023, 13:14 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2023 in Lagdo, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 3 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 78 in Cameroon in 2023, of 270.

Burnt area
1,752ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
4 Feb 2023 – 6 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
4 Feb
2023
Heat detections
56
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Energy released
633MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Feb 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb6 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

456

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.

What happened to each town

  1. Lagdo where it started
    1,763 ha reached on 29 Jan
    0.8 %

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 · 28 Jan 2023
After · 13 Feb 2023

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 · 56Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lagdo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 6 February 2023: 3 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 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

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 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.