Tabati fire, 31 December 2024 Tabati
The fire started on 31 December 2024 in Tabati, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,255 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 121th largest in Adamaoua since 2016 (of 233 with a page). Number 113 in Cameroon in 2024, of 195.
The power measured by the satellite is low (29.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,255ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 31 Dec 2024 – 3 Jan 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 31 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 20
- in a single hotspot: 30 MW
- Energy released
- 196MW
- 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
77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 469 ha in 2016, 750 ha in 2020, 405 ha in 2021, 844 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 965 ha that had burned before.
- 750 ha Tabati fire, January 2020 1,861 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 523 ha Tabati fire, December 2022 1,160 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 469 ha Tabati fire, December 2016 2,007 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 405 ha Tabati fire, February 2021 3,019 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 321 ha Tabati fire, January 2022 2,506 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Tabati where it started1,263 ha reached on 31 Dec0.1 %
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 4 January 2025 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 · 20Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,017 haTabati27 February 2021 · 6 days · 11 km away
- 6,246 haTabati8 February 2025 · 4 days · 14 km away
- 4,621 haTabatiJanuary 2019 · 4 days · 16 km away
- 4,037 haTabati1 February 2021 · 5 days · 16 km away
- 3,335 haTabati10 January 2020 · 9 days · 17 km away
- 3,203 haTabati20 January 2022 · 8 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tabati fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 December 2024 and 3 January 2025: 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 1,255 hectares (12.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tabati (1,263 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
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.