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Vassako fire, 31 December 2017 Vassako

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2018, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2017 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,641 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 137th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 58 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vassako · 2016Vassako · 2016Vassako · 2025Vassako · 2020

Burnt area
6,641ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
31 Dec 2017 – 9 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
31 Dec
2017
Heat detections
254
in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
232MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec9 Jan
9 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

31 Dec 2017 · 442 MW · 21 1 Jan 2018 · 20 MW · 2 2 Jan 2018 · 188 MW · 24 3 Jan 2018 · 967 MW · 103 4 Jan 2018 · 341 MW · 38 5 Jan 2018 · 201 MW · 32 6 Jan 2018 · 90 MW · 14 7 Jan 2018 · 54 MW · 12 8 Jan 2018 · 4 MW · 4 9 Jan 2018 · 15 MW · 4
31 Dec 2 Jan 3 Jan 4 Jan 6 Jan 8 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

36°high
32km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,290 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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
    6,683 ha reached on 31 Dec
    0.3 %

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)
31 Dec 35.8 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Jan 35.0 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jan 33.8 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Jan 33.1 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Jan 33.1 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Jan 33.0 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Jan 33.4 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jan 35.0 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Jan 34.8 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Jan 34.5 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jan after 35.4 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Jan after 35.7 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan after 35.3 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan after 35.2 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Jan after 35.9 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jan after 36.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Jan after 35.9 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Jan after 36.0 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Jan after 35.1 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jan after 36.0 °C 9 % 29 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 · 24 Dec 2017
After · 16 Jan 2018

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 · 254Every 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 31 December 2017 to 9 January 2018 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 December 2017 to 7 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,641 hectares (66.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Vassako (6,683 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 December 2017 to 7 January 2018. 254 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.