Ngambé-Tikar fire, 10 February 2016 Ngambé-Tikar
The fire started on 10 February 2016 in Ngambé-Tikar, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,314 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 24th largest in Centre since 2016 (of 200 with a page). Number 2 in Cameroon in 2016, of 304.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,314ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 28days
- 10 Feb 2016 – 8 Mar 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 10 Feb
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 273
- in a single hotspot: 72 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 184MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.5 mm on 10 Mar.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Ngambé-Tikar where it started5,352 ha reached on 10 Feb0.8 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 2.6 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Feb | 38.5 °C | 9 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 18 Feb | 36.1 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Feb | 38.2 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 20 Feb | 38.4 °C | 12 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Feb | 38.4 °C | 11 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Feb | 38.4 °C | 13 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Feb | 37.1 °C | 12 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 24 Feb | 36.5 °C | 11 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Feb | 36.2 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Feb | 38.1 °C | 12 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Feb | 38.7 °C | 11 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 28 Feb | 38.8 °C | 13 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Feb | 38.4 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 1 Mar | 37.5 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Mar | 36.8 °C | 30 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Mar | 35.7 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Mar | 33.4 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 5 Mar | 36.5 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 6 Mar | 35.4 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Mar | 37.6 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Mar | 37.6 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Mar after | 37.5 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Mar after | 37.0 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 9.5 mm | Low 8 |
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.
Detections table · 273Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 20,590 haNgambé-Tikar6 February 2021 · 34 days · 1 km away
- 120,811 haNgambé-Tikar7 February 2026 · 45 days · 9 km away
- 22,996 haNgambé-TikarJanuary 2020 · 54 days · 15 km away
- 14,241 haNgambé-Tikar6 February 2017 · 35 days · 20 km away
- 12,315 haNgambé-Tikar3 February 2023 · 22 days · 24 km away
- 36,493 haNgambé-TikarJanuary 2023 · 45 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ngambé-Tikar fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 February 2016 to 8 March 2016 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 February 2016 to 2 March 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,314 hectares (53.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ngambé-Tikar (5,352 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 2 March 2016 → 8 March 2016.
- Start date: 17 February 2016 → 10 February 2016.
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 17 February 2016 to 2 March 2016. 273 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.
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.