How long did the Ouadda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 February 2020 to 18 February 2020 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 February 2020 to 18 February 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,028 hectares (80.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouadda (8,075 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 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 · 2020-02-07 → 2020-02-18

Ouadda fire, 7 February 2020 Ouadda

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2020, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 7 February 2020 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,028 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 180th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 56 in Central African Republic in 2020, of 101.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2016 Ouadda · 2017 Ouadda · 2021 Ouadda · 2020

Burnt area: 8,028ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 7 Feb 2020 – 18 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 7 Feb; 2020
Heat detections: 204; in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start: 56; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 79MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Feb18 Feb

Play back 18 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 18 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

50km/h · peak gust

9%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: 4,794 ha in 2016, 2,407 ha in 2017, 1,276 ha in 2018, 3,669 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,633 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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

8,075 ha reached on 7 Feb

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
7 Feb	37.3 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Feb	37.6 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
9 Feb	36.9 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
10 Feb	36.5 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
11 Feb	35.1 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
12 Feb	34.2 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
13 Feb	35.4 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
14 Feb	37.0 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
15 Feb	37.8 °C	10 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
16 Feb	39.4 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
17 Feb	38.5 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Feb	35.8 °C	28 %	31 km/h	1.7 mm	High 26
19 Feb after	37.2 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Feb after	37.2 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
21 Feb after	37.9 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Feb after	38.5 °C	10 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
23 Feb after	36.9 °C	9 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
24 Feb after	38.7 °C	8 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
25 Feb after	36.2 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
26 Feb after	36.4 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
27 Feb after	38.7 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
28 Feb after	39.2 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Jan 2020

After · 25 Feb 2020

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 · 204Every 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 February 2020 to 18 February 2020 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 February 2020 to 18 February 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,028 hectares (80.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouadda (8,075 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 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

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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 10 February 2020 to 18 February 2020. 204 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned