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Vassako fire, 13 January 2019 Vassako, Mbolo-Pata, Koudou-Bégo

Out · last detection 21 Jan 2019, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2019 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,098 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 121th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 32 in Central African Republic in 2019, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vassako · 2017Vassako · 2021Yéngou · 2024Mbolo-Pata · 2022

Burnt area
7,098ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
13 Jan 2019 – 22 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
3
sub-prefectures
Started on
13 Jan
2019
Heat detections
214
in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
362MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan22 Jan
21 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2019 · 548 MW · 57 16 Jan 2019 · 853 MW · 52 17 Jan 2019 · 138 MW · 20 18 Jan 2019 · 412 MW · 49 19 Jan 2019 · 152 MW · 26 21 Jan 2019 · 66 MW · 10
15 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 21 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

38°high
35km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 833 ha in 2016, 3,127 ha in 2017, 496 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,754 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 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
    6,107 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.3 %
  2. Mbolo-Pata
    1,028 ha reached on 16 Jan
    0.2 %
  3. Koudou-Bégo
    0 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.0 %

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 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)
13 Jan 38.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan 36.7 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jan 35.9 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jan 36.7 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jan 37.2 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jan 37.3 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan 37.8 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jan 38.5 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Jan 38.5 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Jan 38.9 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jan after 37.7 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Jan after 38.0 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jan after 39.1 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Jan after 37.0 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jan after 37.5 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jan after 37.9 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Jan after 37.2 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jan after 38.9 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 Jan after 38.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jan 2019
After · 29 Jan 2019

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 · 214Every 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 13 January 2019 to 22 January 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2019 to 21 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,098 hectares (71.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Vassako (6,107 ha, 0.3 %); Mbolo-Pata (1,028 ha, 0.2 %); Koudou-Bégo (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 35 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 January 2019 → 22 January 2019.

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 14 January 2019 to 21 January 2019. 214 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.