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Rafaï fire, 23 December 2018 Rafaï

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2019, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2018 in Rafaï, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,405 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Mbomou since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 51 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rafaï · 2021Rafaï · 2021Rafaï · 2019Rafaï · 2021

Burnt area
7,405ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
23 Dec 2018 – 9 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
23 Dec
2018
Heat detections
234
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
154MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec9 Jan
9 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

24 Dec 2018 · 33 MW · 3 25 Dec 2018 · 18 MW · 5 26 Dec 2018 · 42 MW · 11 27 Dec 2018 · 162 MW · 15 28 Dec 2018 · 1,055 MW · 75 29 Dec 2018 · 459 MW · 59 30 Dec 2018 · 124 MW · 24 31 Dec 2018 · 73 MW · 29 1 Jan 2019 · 8 MW · 3 2 Jan 2019 · 6 MW · 2 3 Jan 2019 · 5 MW · 1 8 Jan 2019 · 4 MW · 4 9 Jan 2019 · 12 MW · 3
24 Dec 26 Dec 28 Dec 30 Dec 1 Jan 3 Jan 9 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
40km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11 ha in 2016, 2,984 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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

  1. Rafaï where it started
    7,457 ha reached on 24 Dec
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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

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)
23 Dec 34.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Dec 35.0 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Dec 36.0 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Dec 37.1 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Dec 37.0 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Dec 34.9 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Dec 36.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Dec 36.6 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Dec 35.4 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jan 36.2 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jan 36.8 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jan 37.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Jan 37.5 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Jan 37.1 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jan 35.2 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jan 35.9 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jan 35.8 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jan 35.6 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jan after 36.1 °C 14 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Jan after 37.8 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Jan after 37.5 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jan after 36.8 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jan after 34.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jan after 34.8 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jan after 34.5 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
17 Jan after 36.5 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jan after 36.6 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Jan after 37.1 °C 12 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Dec 2018
After · 16 Jan 2019

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 · 234Every 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 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 23 December 2018 to 9 January 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 December 2018 to 2 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,405 hectares (74.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Rafaï (7,457 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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.

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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 26 December 2018 to 2 January 2019. 234 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.