Mbé fire, 29 December 2025 Mbé, Poli
The fire started on 29 December 2025 in Mbé, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,180 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 291th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 123 in Cameroon in 2025, of 408.
The power measured by the satellite is low (8.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mbé · 2025Mbé · 2025Poli · 2016Poli · 2019
- Burnt area
- 2,180ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 29 Dec 2025 – 14 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 29 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 33
- in a single hotspot: 9 MW
- Average daily power
- 7MW
- 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
48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,049 ha in 2025.
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
-
Mbé where it started2,043 ha reached on 30 Dec1.2 %
-
152 ha reached on 29 Dec0.0 %
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 12 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 65 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.7 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 · 33Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 26,671 haPoli3 December 2016 · 21 days · 17 km away
- 6,406 haPoli10 December 2019 · 14 days · 18 km away
- 6,218 haPoli26 January 2021 · 11 days · 23 km away
- 22,166 haTcholliré30 November 2017 · 23 days · 26 km away
- 6,762 haTcholliré7 December 2021 · 6 days · 27 km away
- 7,115 haPoli20 January 2020 · 12 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mbé fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 December 2025 to 14 January 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 January 2026 to 10 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,180 hectares (21.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mbé (2,043 ha, 1.2 %); Poli (152 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
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 3 January 2026 to 10 January 2026. 33 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.