How long did the Vassako fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2016 to 12 January 2016 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2016 to 12 January 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,429 hectares (144.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Vassako (14,524 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.

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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2016-01-04 → 2016-01-12

Vassako fire, 4 January 2016 Vassako

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2016, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2016 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,429 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 35th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 42 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vassako · 2024 Vassako · 2022 Vassako · 2021 Vassako · 2025

Burnt area: 14,429ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 4 Jan 2016 – 12 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 4 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 686; in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan12 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jan 6 Jan 8 Jan 10 Jan 12 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

39°high

30km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.1% of the area of London (144 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

Vassako where it started

14,524 ha reached on 4 Jan

0.7 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
4 Jan	35.5 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 49
5 Jan	37.1 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Very high 49
6 Jan	37.8 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Very high 48
7 Jan	38.4 °C	16 %	27 km/h	Very high 50
8 Jan	38.7 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Jan	38.6 °C	8 %	28 km/h	Extreme 54
10 Jan	37.3 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 52
11 Jan	37.3 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Extreme 53
12 Jan	37.0 °C	13 %	24 km/h	Extreme 53
13 Jan after	37.0 °C	13 %	23 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Jan after	36.9 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Extreme 54
15 Jan after	37.1 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Extreme 56
16 Jan after	36.6 °C	14 %	25 km/h	Extreme 53
17 Jan after	36.6 °C	13 %	31 km/h	Extreme 54
18 Jan after	35.4 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Extreme 54
19 Jan after	35.3 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Jan after	36.7 °C	12 %	23 km/h	Extreme 55
21 Jan after	36.1 °C	11 %	23 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Jan after	36.0 °C	11 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Dec 2015

After · 19 Jan 2016

Before After

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 · 686Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Vassako fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2016 to 12 January 2016 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2016 to 12 January 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,429 hectares (144.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Vassako (14,524 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What really happened?

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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 5 January 2016 to 12 January 2016. 686 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.

Where it burned