Ndenga fire, 25 February 2026 Ndenga
The fire started on 25 February 2026 in Ndenga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,213 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Nana-Grébizi since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 16 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 148.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 22,213ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 25 Feb 2026 – 8 Mar 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 25 Feb
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 579
- in a single hotspot: 156 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 530MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 14 Mar.
This area had burned before
74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,804 ha in 2016, 1,386 ha in 2017, 1,420 ha in 2019, 6,792 ha in 2020, 6,690 ha in 2021, 3,559 ha in 2022, 6,007 ha in 2023, 2,025 ha in 2024, 1,544 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,424 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Ndenga where it started22,356 ha reached on 25 Feb6.1 %
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.
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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Feb | 36.2 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Feb | 36.7 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Feb | 37.1 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Feb | 35.5 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 1 Mar | 35.6 °C | 12 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 2 Mar | 36.6 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Mar | 37.4 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 4 Mar | 36.2 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Mar | 36.5 °C | 21 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Mar | 36.9 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Mar | 38.0 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Mar | 39.0 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 9 Mar after | 39.4 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Mar after | 36.7 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Mar after | 36.2 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Mar after | 36.6 °C | 32 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Mar after | 37.5 °C | 33 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Mar after | 37.2 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 29 |
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 1 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 119 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.5 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 · 579Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ndenga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 February 2026 and 8 March 2026: 12 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 22,213 hectares (222.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ndenga (22,356 ha, 6.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 579 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.
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.