How long did the Ouadda fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 January 2017 and 9 February 2017: 11 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,304 hectares (63.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouadda (6,343 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2017-01-30 → 2017-02-09

Ouadda fire, 30 January 2017 Ouadda

Out · last detection 9 Feb 2017, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 30 January 2017 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,304 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 257th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 66 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2018 Ouadda · 2016

Burnt area: 6,304ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 30 Jan 2017 – 9 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 30 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 171; in a single hotspot: 107 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jan9 Feb

Play back 9 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jan 1 Feb 3 Feb 4 Feb 5 Feb 7 Feb 9 Feb

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

46km/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

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 678 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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

Ouadda where it started

6,343 ha reached on 30 Jan

0.3 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
30 Jan	36.3 °C	10 %	23 km/h	Extreme 51
31 Jan	36.7 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 54
1 Feb	36.6 °C	8 %	46 km/h	Extreme 62
2 Feb	34.6 °C	7 %	46 km/h	Extreme 64
3 Feb	34.8 °C	8 %	42 km/h	Extreme 61
4 Feb	35.7 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Extreme 54
5 Feb	37.4 °C	10 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
6 Feb	37.9 °C	9 %	39 km/h	Extreme 60
7 Feb	39.2 °C	10 %	38 km/h	Extreme 59
8 Feb	38.5 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Feb	38.2 °C	11 %	33 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Feb after	38.7 °C	8 %	30 km/h	Extreme 56
11 Feb after	38.4 °C	8 %	28 km/h	Extreme 55
12 Feb after	38.7 °C	9 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
13 Feb after	36.7 °C	14 %	25 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Feb after	35.1 °C	8 %	35 km/h	Extreme 57
15 Feb after	36.4 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
16 Feb after	36.2 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 60
17 Feb after	33.9 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
18 Feb after	34.6 °C	11 %	32 km/h	Extreme 58
19 Feb after	35.9 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jan 2017

After · 16 Feb 2017

Before After

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 · 171Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouadda fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 January 2017 and 9 February 2017: 11 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,304 hectares (63.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouadda (6,343 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 171 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.

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.

Where it burned