Poli fire, 19 December 2024 Poli
The fire started on 19 December 2024 in Poli, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,753 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 170th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 18 in Cameroon in 2024, of 195.
The power measured by the satellite is low (17.2 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 · 2016Poli · 2023Poli · 2022Poli · 2018
- Burnt area
- 2,753ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 19 Dec 2024 – 29 Dec 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 19 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 105
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 39MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,505 ha in 2016, 2,266 ha in 2017, 863 ha in 2018, 1,242 ha in 2019, 1,210 ha in 2022, 1,576 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,747 ha that had burned before.
- 2,505 ha Poli fire, December 2016 26,671 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,576 ha Poli fire, December 2023 2,846 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,064 ha Poli fire, December 2022 3,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 863 ha Poli fire, December 2018 1,146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 789 ha Poli fire, December 2019 6,406 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 453 ha Poli fire, December 2019 2,123 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 147 ha Tcholliré fire, January 2022 1,258 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 started2,769 ha reached on 19 Dec0.3 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Dec | 30.7 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Dec | 31.4 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Dec | 32.5 °C | 19 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 22 Dec | 33.0 °C | 22 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 23 Dec | 33.0 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 24 Dec | 34.3 °C | 18 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Dec | 34.3 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 26 Dec | 34.9 °C | 15 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Dec | 34.8 °C | 15 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Dec | 34.2 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 29 Dec | 34.6 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Dec after | 36.1 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 31 Dec after | 36.5 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Jan after | 36.0 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 23 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 118 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 95: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 105Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 26,671 haPoli3 December 2016 · 21 days · 3 km away
- 6,406 haPoli10 December 2019 · 14 days · 5 km away
- 22,166 haTcholliré2 December 2017 · 14 days · 11 km away
- 6,762 haTcholliré7 December 2021 · 6 days · 17 km away
- 6,218 haPoli26 January 2021 · 11 days · 17 km away
- 7,115 haPoli20 January 2020 · 12 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Poli fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 December 2024 to 29 December 2024 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 December 2024 to 23 December 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,753 hectares (27.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Poli (2,769 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 23 December 2024 → 29 December 2024.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 December 2024 to 23 December 2024. 105 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.
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.