How long did the Ouadda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 January 2019 to 15 January 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2019 to 14 January 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,551 hectares (55.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouadda (5,591 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 2019-01-07 → 2019-01-15

Ouadda fire, 7 January 2019 Ouadda

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2019, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 7 January 2019 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,551 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 322th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 53 in Central African Republic in 2019, of 64.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2016 Ouadda · 2017 Ouadda · 2020 Ouadda · 2026

Burnt area: 5,551ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 7 Jan 2019 – 15 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 7 Jan; 2019
Heat detections: 172; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 148MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jan15 Jan

Play back 15 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jan 10 Jan 12 Jan 14 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

37°high

36km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,821 ha in 2016, 2,935 ha in 2017, 1,560 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,622 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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

5,591 ha reached on 7 Jan

0.2 %

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)
7 Jan	34.3 °C	16 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Jan	34.5 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
9 Jan	34.7 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
10 Jan	35.3 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
11 Jan	36.5 °C	13 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
12 Jan	37.3 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
13 Jan	37.4 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Jan	35.7 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 50
15 Jan	35.2 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
16 Jan after	35.9 °C	12 %	29 km/h	Very high 48
17 Jan after	35.1 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 53
18 Jan after	35.6 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 51
19 Jan after	36.4 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
20 Jan after	36.7 °C	10 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Jan after	36.9 °C	9 %	31 km/h	Very high 50
22 Jan after	37.5 °C	8 %	29 km/h	Extreme 51
23 Jan after	37.2 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Jan after	37.6 °C	9 %	32 km/h	Extreme 53
25 Jan after	37.8 °C	10 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Dec 2018

After · 22 Jan 2019

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 · 172Every 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 7 January 2019 to 15 January 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2019 to 14 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,551 hectares (55.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouadda (5,591 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 January 2019 to 14 January 2019. 172 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