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CM · Cameroon · →

Poli fire, 12 December 2018 Poli

Out · last detection 12 Dec 2018, 12:16 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2018 in Poli, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,233 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1047th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 45 in Cameroon in 2018, of 104.

Burnt area
1,233ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
12 Dec 2018 – 12 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
12 Dec
2018
Heat detections
25
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Energy released
282MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec12 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

12

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

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 758 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 628 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Poli where it started
    1,242 ha reached on 11 Dec
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Dec 2018
After · 19 Dec 2018

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 · 25Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Poli fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 December 2018 and 12 December 2018: 1 day 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 1,233 hectares (12.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Poli (1,242 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (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

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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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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.