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Ouadda fire, February 2023 Ouadda, Dar El Kouti

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2023, 12:36 UTC

The fire started on 12 February 2023 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,072 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 278th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 37 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 53.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dar El Kouti · 2017Ouadda · 2020Ouadda · 2026Ouadda · 2026

Burnt area
6,072ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
12 Feb 2023 – 24 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
2
sub-prefectures
Started on
12 Feb
2023
Heat detections
187
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Feb24 Feb
24 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Feb 2023 · 38 MW · 14 13 Feb 2023 · 45 MW · 6 14 Feb 2023 · 27 MW · 2 15 Feb 2023 · 152 MW · 7 16 Feb 2023 · 147 MW · 52 17 Feb 2023 · 55 MW · 15 18 Feb 2023 · 55 MW · 12 19 Feb 2023 · 20 MW · 6 20 Feb 2023 · 348 MW · 33 21 Feb 2023 · 96 MW · 15 22 Feb 2023 · 21 MW · 5 23 Feb 2023 · 60 MW · 15 24 Feb 2023 · 24 MW · 5
12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 18 Feb 20 Feb 22 Feb 24 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
38km/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

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,723 ha in 2016, 1,254 ha in 2017, 2,314 ha in 2020, 637 ha in 2021, 1,521 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,687 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% 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

  1. Ouadda where it started
    4,152 ha reached on 12 Feb
    0.2 %
  2. Dar El Kouti
    1,959 ha reached on 16 Feb
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
12 Feb 38.7 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Feb 37.4 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Feb 36.9 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Feb 36.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Feb 33.1 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Feb 33.5 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Feb 35.2 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Feb 37.4 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Feb 38.2 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Feb 38.3 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Feb 38.9 °C 10 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Feb 38.5 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Feb 38.7 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Feb after 37.4 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Feb after 37.0 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Feb after 39.1 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Feb after 37.5 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Mar after 37.7 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Mar after 37.9 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Mar after 37.2 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Mar after 38.6 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Mar after 39.8 °C 5 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
6 Mar after 40.5 °C 4 % 37 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 · 5 Feb 2023
After · 3 Mar 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 10 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak48 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM1071 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
101112131415161718192021222324252627
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 187Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 February 2023 and 24 February 2023: 13 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 6,072 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ouadda (4,152 ha, 0.2 %); Dar El Kouti (1,959 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 187 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 2025, 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.