How long did the Ouadda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 January 2026 to 16 February 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 February 2026 to 12 February 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,253 hectares (122.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouadda (12,335 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 2026-01-27 → 2026-02-16

Ouadda fire, 27 January 2026 Ouadda

Out · last detection 16 Feb 2026, 12:41 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2026 in Ouadda, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 111th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 33 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 147.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouadda · 2026 Ouadda · 2026

Burnt area: 12,253ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 27 Jan 2026 – 16 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 27 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 294; in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 151MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan16 Feb

Play back 16 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jan 3 Feb 5 Feb 6 Feb 9 Feb 12 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

43km/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

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,036 ha in 2016, 1,263 ha in 2017, 889 ha in 2021, 1,697 ha in 2022, 615 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,100 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.7% of the area of London (123 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

12,335 ha reached on 27 Jan

0.5 %

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 area1.8 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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	Danger (FWI)
27 Jan	38.7 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 59
28 Jan	36.5 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Extreme 61
29 Jan	37.2 °C	10 %	37 km/h	Extreme 59
30 Jan	37.6 °C	9 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
31 Jan	37.2 °C	10 %	30 km/h	Extreme 55
1 Feb	36.7 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Extreme 53
2 Feb	37.3 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55
3 Feb	37.8 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 58
4 Feb	38.5 °C	9 %	43 km/h	Extreme 64
5 Feb	39.0 °C	10 %	29 km/h	Extreme 57
6 Feb	35.2 °C	20 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
7 Feb	37.0 °C	16 %	22 km/h	Very high 49
8 Feb	37.8 °C	7 %	34 km/h	Extreme 56
9 Feb	36.8 °C	15 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
10 Feb	36.6 °C	16 %	32 km/h	Extreme 53
11 Feb	36.3 °C	21 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
12 Feb	36.8 °C	20 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
13 Feb	36.6 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Very high 49
14 Feb	35.8 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
15 Feb	38.1 °C	9 %	32 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Feb	38.1 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Extreme 52
17 Feb after	37.7 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 49
18 Feb after	36.6 °C	14 %	27 km/h	Extreme 50
19 Feb after	36.2 °C	14 %	26 km/h	Very high 49
20 Feb after	36.9 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
21 Feb after	38.9 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 57
22 Feb after	36.6 °C	14 %	33 km/h	Extreme 54
23 Feb after	36.5 °C	7 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
24 Feb after	35.9 °C	8 %	31 km/h	Extreme 57
25 Feb after	36.4 °C	7 %	36 km/h	Extreme 60
26 Feb after	35.8 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jan 2026

After · 23 Feb 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 7 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak113 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10122 µg/m³

Optical depth1.14

WHO 15

31123456789101112131415

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 · 294Every 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 27 January 2026 to 16 February 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 February 2026 to 12 February 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,253 hectares (122.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouadda (12,335 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 12 February 2026 → 16 February 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 2 February 2026 → 27 January 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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 February 2026 to 12 February 2026. 294 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.

Where it burned