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Vassako fire, 5 January 2018 Vassako

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2018, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2018 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,481 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 194th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 66 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vassako · 2017Koudou-Bégo · 2020

Burnt area
5,481ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
5 Jan 2018 – 25 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
5 Jan
2018
Heat detections
233
in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
126MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan25 Jan
25 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jan 2018 · 17 MW · 5 8 Jan 2018 · 5 MW · 1 9 Jan 2018 · 49 MW · 2 10 Jan 2018 · 19 MW · 4 11 Jan 2018 · 259 MW · 17 12 Jan 2018 · 19 MW · 5 13 Jan 2018 · 46 MW · 23 14 Jan 2018 · 241 MW · 24 15 Jan 2018 · 148 MW · 29 16 Jan 2018 · 293 MW · 28 17 Jan 2018 · 502 MW · 40 18 Jan 2018 · 139 MW · 27 19 Jan 2018 · 128 MW · 12 22 Jan 2018 · 2 MW · 1 24 Jan 2018 · 148 MW · 13 25 Jan 2018 · 4 MW · 2
6 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 19 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

36°high
34km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 29 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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
    5,509 ha reached on 6 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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
5 Jan 32.8 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jan 33.0 °C 13 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Jan 34.3 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jan 34.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jan 34.2 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jan 35.0 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jan 35.3 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Jan 35.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jan 35.1 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Jan 35.5 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan 36.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jan 35.7 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jan 35.7 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jan 34.9 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan 35.5 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Jan 35.7 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jan 35.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jan 36.5 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jan 36.4 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Jan 35.8 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Jan 35.2 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jan after 35.3 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jan after 36.0 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Jan after 36.1 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Jan after 35.2 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jan after 35.5 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Jan after 35.6 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Feb after 36.1 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Feb after 37.2 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Feb after 37.3 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Feb after 37.7 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2017
After · 1 Feb 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 · 233Every 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 5 January 2018 to 25 January 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 January 2018 to 19 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,481 hectares (54.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Vassako (5,509 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 January 2018 to 19 January 2018. 233 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 2020, 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.