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CM · Cameroon · –

Ngambé-Tikar fire, 14 February 2026 Ngambé-Tikar, Malentouen

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2026, 01:00 UTC

The fire started on 14 February 2026 in Ngambé-Tikar, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 36 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,327 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 13 in Cameroon in 2026, of 390.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
7,327ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
36days
14 Feb 2026 – 21 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
14 Feb
2026
Heat detections
342
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
107MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Feb21 Mar
22 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Feb 2026 · 16 MW · 3 16 Feb 2026 · 202 MW · 10 17 Feb 2026 · 24 MW · 2 20 Feb 2026 · 37 MW · 3 21 Feb 2026 · 66 MW · 9 22 Feb 2026 · 30 MW · 4 23 Feb 2026 · 121 MW · 18 24 Feb 2026 · 6 MW · 7 25 Feb 2026 · 290 MW · 26 26 Feb 2026 · 7 MW · 4 28 Feb 2026 · 220 MW · 24 1 Mar 2026 · 121 MW · 14 2 Mar 2026 · 253 MW · 40 3 Mar 2026 · 212 MW · 33 4 Mar 2026 · 79 MW · 6 5 Mar 2026 · 166 MW · 13 6 Mar 2026 · 24 MW · 13 7 Mar 2026 · 510 MW · 43 8 Mar 2026 · 204 MW · 29 9 Mar 2026 · 44 MW · 6 11 Mar 2026 · 56 MW · 4 12 Mar 2026 · 182 MW · 9 13 Mar 2026 · 1 MW · 1 14 Mar 2026 · 41 MW · 7 16 Mar 2026 · 17 MW · 3 19 Mar 2026 · 28 MW · 4 21 Mar 2026 · 27 MW · 5 22 Mar 2026 · 1 MW · 2
14 Feb 23 Feb 2 Mar 7 Mar 16 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

37°high
35km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 27 Mar.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,381 ha in 2016, 2,115 ha in 2017, 947 ha in 2019, 1,463 ha in 2020, 941 ha in 2021, 1,258 ha in 2022, 1,748 ha in 2023, 3,821 ha in 2024, 4,728 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,388 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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
    7,439 ha reached on 14 Feb
    1.1 %
  2. 27 ha reached on 25 Feb
    0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.18 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.18 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 51 % of the area in Cameroon

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Feb 34.4 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Feb 34.2 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Feb 36.2 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Feb 32.4 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Feb 32.8 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Feb 33.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Feb 34.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Feb 34.6 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Feb 35.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Feb 35.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Feb 34.9 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Feb 33.5 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Feb 33.3 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Feb 35.0 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Feb 33.8 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Mar 33.5 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Mar 33.8 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Mar 34.0 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Mar 33.1 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Mar 34.0 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Mar 34.1 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Mar 35.8 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Mar 35.6 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Mar 37.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Mar 34.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Mar 35.1 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Mar 33.9 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Mar 33.2 °C 38 % 27 km/h 4.5 mm Low 10
14 Mar 32.0 °C 52 % 28 km/h 14.5 mm Very low 3
15 Mar 34.5 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
16 Mar 33.0 °C 45 % 26 km/h 14.3 mm Very low 2
17 Mar 29.5 °C 57 % 33 km/h 11.4 mm Very low 1
18 Mar 31.4 °C 49 % 22 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 3
19 Mar 31.7 °C 46 % 23 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 4
20 Mar 34.0 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
21 Mar 34.9 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
22 Mar after 33.6 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
23 Mar after 34.1 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Mar after 31.9 °C 50 % 23 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 15
25 Mar after 33.1 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Mar after 31.5 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Mar after 32.7 °C 47 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Feb 2026
After · 28 Mar 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 5 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 84: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³
Days over the guideline27 days
PM10309 µg/m³
Optical depth1.00
18 Feb24 Feb2 Mar8 Mar14 Mar
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 342Every 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 14 February 2026 to 21 March 2026 (36 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 February 2026 to 14 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,327 hectares (73.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ngambé-Tikar (7,439 ha, 1.1 %); Malentouen (27 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 35 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: 14 March 2026 → 21 March 2026.
  2. Start date: 20 February 2026 → 14 February 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 February 2026 to 14 March 2026. 342 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 2025, 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.