Rey-Bouba fire, 2 January 2026 Rey-Bouba
The fire started on 2 January 2026 in Rey-Bouba, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,272 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 978th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 220 in Cameroon in 2026, of 363.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,272ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 2 Jan 2026 – 5 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 2 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 16
- in a single hotspot: 93 MW
- Average daily power
- 118MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,310 ha in 2017, 216 ha in 2018, 281 ha in 2019, 280 ha in 2021, 118 ha in 2022, 226 ha in 2024, 127 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,198 ha that had burned before.
- 943 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2017 2,145 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 367 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2017 1,420 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 280 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2021 4,428 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 236 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2019 3,631 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 226 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2024 1,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 216 ha Rey-Bouba fire, January 2018 1,130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 118 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2022 3,031 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 91 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2025 2,479 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
-
Rey-Bouba where it started1,279 ha reached on 2 Jan0.1 %
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
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 4 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 16Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,454 haRey-Bouba17 December 2019 · 7 days · 11 km away
- 5,814 haRey-Bouba28 November 2025 · 23 days · 11 km away
- 5,524 haRey-Bouba24 January 2024 · 7 days · 15 km away
- 5,113 haRey-Bouba5 January 2020 · 4 days · 23 km away
- 9,049 haTcholliré6 December 2025 · 31 days · 26 km away
- 4,908 haRey-Bouba1 March 2024 · 7 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rey-Bouba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2026 and 5 January 2026: 4 days 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 1,272 hectares (12.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rey-Bouba (1,279 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
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.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 16 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.