Oti fire, 16 January 2023 Oti
The fire started on 16 January 2023 in Oti, Togo, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,436 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 31th largest in Savanes since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 9 in Togo in 2023, of 25.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,436ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 16 Jan 2023 – 26 Jan 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- prefectures
- Started on
- 16 Jan
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 30
- in a single hotspot: 11 MW
- Average daily power
- 93MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 356 ha in 2016, 305 ha in 2018, 87 ha in 2019, 462 ha in 2020, 251 ha in 2021, 966 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,117 ha that had burned before.
- 580 ha Oti fire, January 2022 1,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 462 ha Oti fire, January 2020 1,281 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 386 ha Oti fire, February 2022 1,280 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 356 ha Oti fire, December 2016 1,675 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 305 ha Oti fire, December 2018 1,677 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 251 ha Oti fire, January 2021 1,661 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 87 ha Oti fire, January 2019 1,180 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Oti where it started1,444 ha reached on 19 Jan0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 · 30Every 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 Oti fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 January 2023 to 26 January 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2023 to 22 January 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,436 hectares (14.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Oti (1,444 ha, 0.3 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Togo (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
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 19 January 2023 to 22 January 2023. 30 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.