Poli fire, 4 January 2023 Poli
The fire started on 4 January 2023 in Poli, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,324 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 893th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 146 in Cameroon in 2023, of 270.
- Burnt area
- 1,324ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 4 Jan 2023 – 4 Jan 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 4 Jan
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 25
- in a single hotspot: 116 MW
- Energy released
- 453MW
- sum of detected power
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
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,299 ha in 2016, 355 ha in 2018, 13 ha in 2019, 629 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,281 ha that had burned before.
- 1,143 ha Poli fire, December 2016 26,671 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 629 ha Poli fire, January 2022 1,701 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 355 ha Poli fire, December 2018 2,230 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 143 ha Poli fire, January 2016 1,680 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 13 ha Poli fire, December 2016 4,580 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 13 ha Poli fire, December 2019 6,406 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Poli where it started1,332 ha reached on 4 Jan0.1 %
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.
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.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,166 haTcholliré2 December 2017 · 14 days · 9 km away
- 6,406 haPoli12 December 2019 · 8 days · 9 km away
- 26,671 haPoli10 December 2016 · 13 days · 10 km away
- 6,762 haTcholliré9 December 2021 · 4 days · 20 km away
- 7,115 haPoli21 January 2020 · 7 days · 22 km away
- 9,667 haPoli3 January 2026 · 9 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Poli fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2023 and 4 January 2023: 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 1,324 hectares (13.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Poli (1,332 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.
Report an error
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.