How long did the Mbolo-Pata fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 January 2016 to 18 February 2016 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2016 to 15 February 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,462 hectares (64.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mbolo-Pata (6,508 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CF · Central African Republic · 2016-01-26 → 2016-02-18

Mbolo-Pata fire, January 2016 Mbolo-Pata

Out · last detection 19 Feb 2016, 11:33 UTC

The fire started on 26 January 2016 in Mbolo-Pata, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,462 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 148th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 104 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2026 Mbolo-Pata · 2026

Burnt area: 6,462ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 26 Jan 2016 – 18 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 26 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 186; in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 55MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jan18 Feb

Play back 19 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jan 1 Feb 4 Feb 7 Feb 11 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 18 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

40°high

45km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Mbolo-Pata where it started

6,508 ha reached on 26 Jan

1.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
26 Jan	33.3 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
27 Jan	32.2 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
28 Jan	32.5 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 54
29 Jan	31.7 °C	10 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58
30 Jan	32.1 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 56
31 Jan	33.9 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
1 Feb	35.1 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
2 Feb	35.9 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
3 Feb	37.2 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 55
4 Feb	36.9 °C	13 %	33 km/h	Extreme 54
5 Feb	37.9 °C	9 %	45 km/h	Extreme 61
6 Feb	37.6 °C	8 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
7 Feb	36.6 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
8 Feb	35.4 °C	11 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
9 Feb	35.6 °C	10 %	30 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Feb	35.4 °C	10 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55
11 Feb	35.4 °C	7 %	34 km/h	Extreme 57
12 Feb	35.4 °C	7 %	34 km/h	Extreme 58
13 Feb	37.4 °C	7 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
14 Feb	37.2 °C	6 %	37 km/h	Extreme 59
15 Feb	39.1 °C	8 %	25 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Feb	39.1 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Feb	39.4 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Extreme 57
18 Feb	39.7 °C	11 %	32 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Feb after	39.3 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Extreme 56
20 Feb after	40.5 °C	7 %	33 km/h	Extreme 59
21 Feb after	39.0 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 57
22 Feb after	39.0 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 59
23 Feb after	38.0 °C	9 %	37 km/h	Extreme 62
24 Feb after	37.8 °C	10 %	32 km/h	Extreme 59
25 Feb after	38.9 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 57
26 Feb after	40.1 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 57
27 Feb after	40.3 °C	9 %	32 km/h	Extreme 58
28 Feb after	40.1 °C	9 %	36 km/h	Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jan 2016

After · 25 Feb 2016

Before After

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 · 186Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mbolo-Pata fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 January 2016 to 18 February 2016 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2016 to 15 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,462 hectares (64.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mbolo-Pata (6,508 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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 1 February 2016 to 15 February 2016. 186 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 (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.

Where it burned