How long did the Ouandja fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2017 to 13 December 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2017 to 9 December 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,223 hectares (52.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ouandja (5,250 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2017-12-03 → 2017-12-13

Ouandja fire, December 2017 Ouandja

Out · last detection 9 Dec 2017, 12:16 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2017 in Ouandja, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,223 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 66th largest in Vakaga since 2016 (of 72 with a page). Number 92 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 5,223ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 3 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 3 Dec; 2017
Heat detections: 138; in a single hotspot: 173 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 412MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec13 Dec

Play back 9 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 4 Dec 6 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec 9 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,290 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,139 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

Ouandja where it started

5,250 ha reached on 3 Dec

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)
3 Dec	35.0 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Very high 44
4 Dec	35.7 °C	17 %	39 km/h	Very high 46
5 Dec	35.6 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
6 Dec	35.6 °C	19 %	33 km/h	Very high 42
7 Dec	35.0 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Very high 49
8 Dec	33.3 °C	19 %	45 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Dec	34.1 °C	18 %	41 km/h	Very high 49
10 Dec	35.6 °C	19 %	33 km/h	Very high 45
11 Dec	36.5 °C	18 %	32 km/h	Very high 44
12 Dec	36.2 °C	16 %	43 km/h	Extreme 52
13 Dec	36.1 °C	15 %	42 km/h	Extreme 52
14 Dec after	35.3 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Extreme 52
15 Dec after	34.8 °C	16 %	40 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Dec after	34.7 °C	14 %	39 km/h	Extreme 52
17 Dec after	34.8 °C	16 %	35 km/h	Extreme 50
18 Dec after	35.2 °C	16 %	35 km/h	Very high 49
19 Dec after	36.4 °C	15 %	33 km/h	Very high 48
20 Dec after	36.4 °C	16 %	35 km/h	Very high 50
21 Dec after	37.7 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 55
22 Dec after	37.6 °C	14 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
23 Dec after	38.0 °C	12 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Nov 2017

After · 20 Dec 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 · 138Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouandja fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2017 to 13 December 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2017 to 9 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,223 hectares (52.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ouandja (5,250 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 do you think is wrong?

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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 3 December 2017 to 9 December 2017. 138 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