Tabati fire, 9 February 2023 Tabati
The fire started on 9 February 2023 in Tabati, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,473 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 77th largest in Adamaoua since 2016 (of 233 with a page). Number 115 in Cameroon in 2023, of 270.
- Burnt area
- 1,473ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 9 Feb 2023 – 11 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 9 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 24
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Energy released
- 232MW
- sum of detected power
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
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 142 ha in 2016, 843 ha in 2017, 901 ha in 2019, 282 ha in 2020, 531 ha in 2021, 405 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,356 ha that had burned before.
- 843 ha Yoko fire, January 2017 3,208 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 770 ha Tabati fire, January 2019 4,621 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 405 ha Tabati fire, January 2022 3,203 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 381 ha Tabati fire, February 2021 4,037 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 282 ha Tabati fire, January 2020 3,335 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 142 ha Tabati fire, January 2016 3,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 131 ha Tabati fire, December 2019 1,038 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 106 ha Tabati fire, January 2021 1,212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Tabati where it started1,481 ha reached on 9 Feb0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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.
Detections table · 24Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tabati fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 February 2023 and 11 February 2023: 3 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 1,473 hectares (14.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tabati (1,481 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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
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.