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Vassako fire, 21 December 2016 Vassako

Out · last detection 11 Jan 2017, 12:41 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2016 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,782 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 22 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

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Suggestions: Vassako · 2025Vassako · 2020Vassako · 2025Vassako · 2025

Burnt area
21,782ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
21 Dec 2016 – 10 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
21 Dec
2016
Heat detections
851
in a single hotspot: 180 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
580MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec10 Jan
11 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 2016 · 273 MW · 53 22 Dec 2016 · 684 MW · 50 23 Dec 2016 · 398 MW · 49 24 Dec 2016 · 2 MW · 1 25 Dec 2016 · 1 MW · 1 26 Dec 2016 · 151 MW · 21 27 Dec 2016 · 3,038 MW · 82 28 Dec 2016 · 747 MW · 93 29 Dec 2016 · 612 MW · 50 30 Dec 2016 · 1,884 MW · 112 31 Dec 2016 · 1,077 MW · 100 1 Jan 2017 · 621 MW · 33 2 Jan 2017 · 592 MW · 45 3 Jan 2017 · 1,028 MW · 71 4 Jan 2017 · 245 MW · 34 5 Jan 2017 · 118 MW · 36 6 Jan 2017 · 5 MW · 1 9 Jan 2017 · 103 MW · 7 10 Jan 2017 · 11 MW · 7 11 Jan 2017 · 12 MW · 5
21 Dec 24 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 2 Jan 5 Jan 10 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
31km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (218 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. Vassako where it started
    21,918 ha reached on 21 Dec
    1.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
21 Dec 36.9 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Dec 37.1 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Dec 37.9 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Dec 38.6 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 36.5 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Dec 35.5 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Dec 36.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Dec 36.1 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Dec 36.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Dec 36.6 °C 15 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Jan 37.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jan 37.1 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Jan 36.7 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jan 37.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Jan 36.8 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Jan 37.5 °C 14 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Jan 38.0 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Jan 38.0 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Jan 36.6 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Jan 36.0 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jan after 37.2 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan after 38.0 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan after 38.2 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Jan after 37.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jan after 37.8 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Jan after 38.6 °C 8 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Jan after 38.4 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Jan after 39.3 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Jan after 39.0 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jan after 39.2 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Dec 2016
After · 17 Jan 2017

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 · 851Every 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 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 21 December 2016 to 10 January 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 December 2016 to 5 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,782 hectares (217.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Vassako (21,918 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 December 2016 to 5 January 2017. 851 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 2015, 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 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.