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Mbé fire, 14 December 2025 Mbé, Poli

Out · last detection 16 Dec 2025, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2025 in Mbé, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,344 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 867th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 232 in Cameroon in 2025, of 396.

Burnt area
1,344ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
14 Dec 2025 – 16 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
14 Dec
2025
Heat detections
22
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Energy released
322MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec16 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1416

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

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 259 ha in 2016, 47 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Mbé where it started
    1,351 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.8 %
  2. Poli
    2 ha
    0.0 %

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 · 7 Dec 2025
After · 23 Dec 2025

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 17 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 84 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak84 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10201 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
1213141516171819
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 · 22Every 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 Mbé fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2025 and 16 December 2025: 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 1,344 hectares (13.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mbé (1,351 ha, 0.8 %); Poli (2 ha, 0.0 %).
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.