Skip to content
worldfires
CM · Cameroon · –

Poli fire, November 2026 Poli, Mayo-Baléo

Burning · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 13:25 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 5 November 2026 in Poli, Cameroon. It has been active for 10 days, with 93 heat detections and an area with fire of about 1,162 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 13:25 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Area with fire
≈ 1,162ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
5 Nov 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
5 Nov
2026
Heat detections
93
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
107MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov14 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Nov 2026 · 25 MW · 4 7 Nov 2026 · 77 MW · 6 8 Nov 2026 · 20 MW · 4 9 Nov 2026 · 12 MW · 1 11 Nov 2026 · 87 MW · 12 12 Nov 2026 · 58 MW · 11 13 Nov 2026 · 350 MW · 34 14 Nov 2026 · 228 MW · 20
5 Nov 8 Nov 11 Nov 13 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
31km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Poli where it started
    1,120 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.1 %
  2. 42 ha reached on 13 Nov
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Nov 33.4 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Nov 32.7 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Nov 33.7 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Nov 34.3 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Nov 34.6 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
10 Nov 33.4 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Nov 32.4 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Nov 32.6 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Nov 32.2 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Nov 32.8 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Oct 2026
After · 13 Nov 2026

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 · 93Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 5 November 2026 to 14 November 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 1,162 hectares with fire (11.6 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Poli (1,120 ha, 0.1 %); Mayo-Baléo (42 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Poli fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 13:25 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 1,162 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 93 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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 (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.