How long did the Rafaï fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 February 2017 to 1 March 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 February 2017 to 1 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,219 hectares (132.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Rafaï (13,312 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CF · Central African Republic · 2017-02-19 → 2017-03-01

Rafaï fire, 19 February 2017 Rafaï

Out · last detection 1 Mar 2017, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 19 February 2017 in Rafaï, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,219 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Mbomou since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 24 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rafaï · 2016 Rafaï · 2016 Rafaï · 2023 Rafaï · 2019

Burnt area: 13,219ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 19 Feb 2017 – 1 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 19 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 301; in a single hotspot: 163 MW
Danger at start: 50; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 590MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Feb1 Mar

Play back 1 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Feb 22 Feb 26 Feb 27 Feb 28 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

37km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 10 Mar.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,492 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (132 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Rafaï where it started

13,312 ha reached on 19 Feb

0.5 %

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.

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 Feb	37.2 °C	10 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
20 Feb	38.4 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
21 Feb	37.0 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
22 Feb	37.5 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Feb	38.7 °C	8 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
24 Feb	38.7 °C	7 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Feb	37.4 °C	8 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
26 Feb	36.9 °C	7 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
27 Feb	37.5 °C	9 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
28 Feb	37.5 °C	16 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
1 Mar	37.2 °C	20 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Mar after	35.7 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
3 Mar after	36.6 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
4 Mar after	37.0 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 41
5 Mar after	37.5 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Mar after	36.9 °C	22 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Mar after	38.0 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 Mar after	36.4 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 46
9 Mar after	36.7 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Mar after	36.9 °C	28 %	36 km/h	1.2 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Feb 2017

After · 8 Mar 2017

Before After

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 · 301Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Rafaï fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 February 2017 to 1 March 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 February 2017 to 1 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,219 hectares (132.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Rafaï (13,312 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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

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 22 February 2017 to 1 March 2017. 301 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.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.

Where it burned