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CF · Central African Republic · →

Topia fire, December 2025 Topia

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2025, 11:49 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2025 in Topia, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,422 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 84 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 145.

The power measured by the satellite is low (23.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
7,422ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
10 Dec 2025 – 22 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
10 Dec
2025
Heat detections
226
in a single hotspot: 24 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
108MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

10 Dec 2025 · 159 MW · 34 12 Dec 2025 · 44 MW · 6 13 Dec 2025 · 103 MW · 23 14 Dec 2025 · 309 MW · 42 15 Dec 2025 · 218 MW · 48 16 Dec 2025 · 138 MW · 27 17 Dec 2025 · 18 MW · 6 19 Dec 2025 · 97 MW · 14 20 Dec 2025 · 66 MW · 17 21 Dec 2025 · 14 MW · 5 22 Dec 2025 · 20 MW · 4
10 Dec 13 Dec 14 Dec 15 Dec 17 Dec 20 Dec 22 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2016, 997 ha in 2017, 686 ha in 2021.

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. Topia where it started
    7,471 ha reached on 10 Dec
    1.7 %

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.

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)
10 Dec 34.2 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
11 Dec 31.0 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
12 Dec 32.5 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
13 Dec 33.5 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Dec 34.9 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Dec 35.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Dec 33.5 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Dec 33.2 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Dec 30.9 °C 40 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Dec 33.9 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Dec 34.3 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Dec 35.3 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Dec 34.1 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Dec after 33.4 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Dec after 32.1 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Dec after 34.1 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Dec after 35.5 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Dec after 35.4 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Dec after 34.6 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Dec after 33.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Dec after 32.7 °C 41 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Dec after 34.4 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Jan after 34.6 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Dec 2025
After · 29 Dec 2025

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 17 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 49 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak49 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM1097 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
8910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 226Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Topia fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 December 2025 to 22 December 2025 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 December 2025 to 17 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,422 hectares (74.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Topia (7,471 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
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

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 10 December 2025 to 17 December 2025. 226 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.

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.