Skip to content
worldfires
TD · Chad · –

Tandjilé Est fire, January 2026 Tandjilé Est

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2026, 12:53 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2026 in Tandjilé Est, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,384 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 168 in Chad in 2026, of 242.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tandjilé Est · 2019

Burnt area
2,384ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Jan 2026 – 25 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
15 Jan
2026
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
68MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan25 Jan
25 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2026 · 8 MW · 2 16 Jan 2026 · 11 MW · 5 18 Jan 2026 · 291 MW · 19 19 Jan 2026 · 139 MW · 12 23 Jan 2026 · 15 MW · 2 24 Jan 2026 · 7 MW · 4 25 Jan 2026 · 4 MW · 1
15 Jan 18 Jan 23 Jan 25 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
37km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 714 ha in 2017, 732 ha in 2018, 582 ha in 2022, 93 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,494 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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. Tandjilé Est where it started
    2,398 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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

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)

Started with Very dry air: 54 % of the area in Chad 60 days without rain: 44 % of the area in Chad

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
15 Jan 35.6 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Jan 36.9 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Jan 36.5 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Jan 37.3 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Jan 37.7 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Jan 38.3 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Jan 38.3 °C 16 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jan 37.9 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jan 37.7 °C 11 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jan 37.4 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Jan 37.9 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Jan after 38.3 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Jan after 37.4 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Jan after 38.6 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Jan after 38.0 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
30 Jan after 38.6 °C 16 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Jan after 38.7 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Feb after 39.1 °C 10 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Feb after 39.3 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Feb after 39.5 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Feb after 39.4 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2026
After · 1 Feb 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1093 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
13 Jan15 Jan17 Jan19 Jan21 Jan
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 45Every 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 Chad

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tandjilé Est fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2026 to 25 January 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,384 hectares (23.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tandjilé Est (2,398 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 January 2026 → 25 January 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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?

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 15 January 2026 to 19 January 2026. 45 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 2025, 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 ADM2 (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.