Poli fire, 7 February 2021 Poli
The fire started on 7 February 2021 in Poli, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,419 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 221th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 53 in Cameroon in 2021, of 293.
The power measured by the satellite is low (23.9 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: Poli · 2019Poli · 2018Poli · 2016Poli · 2020
- Burnt area
- 2,419ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 7 Feb 2021 – 13 Feb 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 7 Feb
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 62
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Average daily power
- 42MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 427 ha in 2016, 332 ha in 2018, 604 ha in 2019, 186 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 982 ha that had burned before.
- 475 ha Poli fire, March 2019 1,373 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 332 ha Poli fire, January 2018 1,146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 242 ha Poli fire, February 2016 2,459 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 186 ha Poli fire, January 2020 2,711 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 134 ha Poli fire, December 2016 2,301 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 129 ha Poli fire, January 2019 1,333 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 51 ha Poli fire, January 2016 1,114 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Poli where it started2,432 ha reached on 7 Feb0.2 %
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 2020Inside 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
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 62Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,115 haPoli21 January 2020 · 7 days · 9 km away
- 6,218 haPoli28 January 2021 · 8 days · 18 km away
- 6,406 haPoli12 December 2019 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 26,671 haPoli10 December 2016 · 13 days · 32 km away
- 22,166 haTcholliré2 December 2017 · 14 days · 39 km away
- 9,527 haPoli28 December 2019 · 18 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Poli fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 February 2021 and 13 February 2021: 7 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 2,419 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Poli (2,432 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 62 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.