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Ouadda fire, 15 January 2017 Ouadda

Out · last detection 23 Jan 2017, 23:12 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2017 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,467 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 170th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 44 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2016Ouadda · 2018Ouadda · 2016Ouadda · 2026

Burnt area
8,467ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
15 Jan 2017 – 22 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
15 Jan
2017
Heat detections
228
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
277MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan22 Jan
23 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2017 · 26 MW · 1 18 Jan 2017 · 139 MW · 30 19 Jan 2017 · 292 MW · 50 20 Jan 2017 · 329 MW · 58 21 Jan 2017 · 256 MW · 47 22 Jan 2017 · 885 MW · 38 23 Jan 2017 · 14 MW · 4
15 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 21 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
49km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,132 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.3% of the area of London (85 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. Ouadda where it started
    8,521 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.4 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
15 Jan 37.6 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Jan 38.5 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Jan 38.6 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Jan 39.0 °C 7 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Jan 38.4 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan 38.2 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Jan 38.6 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 Jan 38.3 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
23 Jan after 38.0 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 Jan after 37.8 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Jan after 36.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Jan after 36.2 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Jan after 36.8 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Jan after 37.5 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Jan after 34.8 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jan after 36.2 °C 10 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Jan after 36.6 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Feb after 36.5 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2017
After · 29 Jan 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 · 228Every 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 Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouadda fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2017 to 22 January 2017 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 January 2017 to 22 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,467 hectares (84.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ouadda (8,521 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
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.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 January 2017 to 22 January 2017. 228 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 (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.