How long did the Ouadda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 February 2017 to 2 March 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 February 2017 to 1 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,120 hectares (61.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouadda (6,167 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % 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 · 2017-02-19 → 2017-03-02

Ouadda fire, 19 February 2017 Ouadda

Out · last detection 2 Mar 2017, 12:03 UTC

The fire started on 19 February 2017 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,120 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 275th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 70 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2026 Ouadda · 2020 Ouadda · 2016 Ouadda · 2026

Burnt area: 6,120ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 19 Feb 2017 – 2 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 19 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 208; in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start: 56; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 94MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Feb2 Mar

Play back 2 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 23 Feb 25 Feb 27 Feb 1 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

46km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 596 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (61 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

6,167 ha reached on 19 Feb

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)
19 Feb	34.2 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
20 Feb	35.3 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 57
21 Feb	35.0 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 58
22 Feb	35.3 °C	10 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
23 Feb	35.1 °C	9 %	42 km/h	Extreme 62
24 Feb	34.8 °C	10 %	46 km/h	Extreme 64
25 Feb	34.9 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 62
26 Feb	34.9 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 59
27 Feb	35.7 °C	8 %	34 km/h	Extreme 57
28 Feb	36.9 °C	8 %	25 km/h	Extreme 54
1 Mar	36.7 °C	10 %	27 km/h	Extreme 52
2 Mar	35.7 °C	16 %	28 km/h	Very high 49
3 Mar after	36.4 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 51
4 Mar after	36.6 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 56
5 Mar after	36.7 °C	8 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58
6 Mar after	37.1 °C	9 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
7 Mar after	36.8 °C	8 %	34 km/h	Extreme 55
8 Mar after	35.6 °C	9 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
9 Mar after	36.3 °C	17 %	30 km/h	Extreme 51
10 Mar after	35.7 °C	20 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
11 Mar after	37.1 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 55
12 Mar after	36.2 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Feb 2017

After · 9 Mar 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 · 208Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 February 2017 to 2 March 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 February 2017 to 1 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,120 hectares (61.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouadda (6,167 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % 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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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 February 2017 to 1 March 2017. 208 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