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Ngambé-Tikar fire, 3 February 2017 Ngambé-Tikar

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2017, 12:15 UTC

The fire started on 3 February 2017 in Ngambé-Tikar, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 37 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Centre since 2016 (of 200 with a page). Number 6 in Cameroon in 2017, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ngambé-Tikar · 2025Ngambé-Tikar · 2023Ngambé-Tikar · 2017Ngambé-Tikar · 2026

Burnt area
5,633ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
37days
3 Feb 2017 – 11 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
3 Feb
2017
Heat detections
461
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
94MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Feb11 Mar
12 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Feb 2017 · 41 MW · 7 4 Feb 2017 · 74 MW · 5 5 Feb 2017 · 11 MW · 2 6 Feb 2017 · 98 MW · 14 7 Feb 2017 · 52 MW · 8 8 Feb 2017 · 28 MW · 3 9 Feb 2017 · 7 MW · 3 10 Feb 2017 · 106 MW · 15 11 Feb 2017 · 23 MW · 7 12 Feb 2017 · 176 MW · 9 13 Feb 2017 · 165 MW · 17 14 Feb 2017 · 72 MW · 16 15 Feb 2017 · 7 MW · 9 16 Feb 2017 · 24 MW · 5 17 Feb 2017 · 53 MW · 7 18 Feb 2017 · 71 MW · 4 19 Feb 2017 · 4 MW · 1 20 Feb 2017 · 42 MW · 11 21 Feb 2017 · 196 MW · 23 22 Feb 2017 · 200 MW · 18 23 Feb 2017 · 346 MW · 30 24 Feb 2017 · 153 MW · 25 25 Feb 2017 · 281 MW · 46 26 Feb 2017 · 119 MW · 40 27 Feb 2017 · 217 MW · 27 28 Feb 2017 · 231 MW · 19 1 Mar 2017 · 97 MW · 10 2 Mar 2017 · 138 MW · 16 3 Mar 2017 · 86 MW · 26 4 Mar 2017 · 68 MW · 13 5 Mar 2017 · 72 MW · 8 6 Mar 2017 · 85 MW · 8 9 Mar 2017 · 5 MW · 2 10 Mar 2017 · 18 MW · 3 11 Mar 2017 · 10 MW · 2 12 Mar 2017 · 12 MW · 2
3 Feb 9 Feb 15 Feb 21 Feb 23 Feb 27 Feb 5 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
27km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 7 Mar.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (56 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

  1. Ngambé-Tikar where it started
    5,672 ha reached on 3 Feb
    0.8 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.92 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.92 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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)
9 Feb 36.9 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Feb 36.2 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Feb 36.8 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Feb 37.3 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Feb 37.2 °C 11 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Feb 37.2 °C 7 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Feb 36.1 °C 11 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Feb 34.6 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Feb 34.0 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Feb 34.7 °C 12 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Feb 35.2 °C 10 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Feb 36.3 °C 9 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Feb 36.6 °C 10 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Feb 37.0 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Feb 38.2 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Feb 38.1 °C 7 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Feb 37.3 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Feb 34.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Feb 36.7 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Feb 37.5 °C 9 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Mar 36.9 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Mar 36.6 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Mar 37.7 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Mar 38.4 °C 8 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Mar 37.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Mar 37.1 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Mar 37.2 °C 25 % 36 km/h 2.6 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jan 2017
After · 18 Mar 2017

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 · 461Every 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 Ngambé-Tikar fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 February 2017 to 11 March 2017 (37 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 February 2017 to 4 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,633 hectares (56.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ngambé-Tikar (5,672 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 March 2017 → 11 March 2017.
  2. Start date: 9 February 2017 → 3 February 2017.

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 February 2017 to 4 March 2017. 461 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 (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.