Vassako fire, December 2020 Vassako
The fire started on 29 December 2020 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,313 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 18th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 19 in Central African Republic in 2020, of 101.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 21,313ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 29 Dec 2020 – 19 Jan 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 29 Dec
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 704
- in a single hotspot: 174 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 395MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13,224 ha in 2016, 5,204 ha in 2017, 3,185 ha in 2018, 3,364 ha in 2019, 5,179 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,568 ha that had burned before.
- 4,461 ha Vassako fire, December 2017 6,641 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,006 ha Vassako fire, December 2016 21,782 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,624 ha Vassako fire, January 2016 5,229 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started21,447 ha reached on 29 Dec1.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Dec | 37.6 °C | 14 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Dec | 37.2 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 31 Dec | 37.9 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Jan | 37.3 °C | 16 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Jan | 36.9 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 3 Jan | 35.5 °C | 25 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 4 Jan | 35.8 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Jan | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Jan | 38.5 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Jan | 38.3 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Jan | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 9 Jan | 35.4 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Jan | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 11 Jan | 36.2 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 12 Jan | 36.6 °C | 8 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 13 Jan | 36.8 °C | 12 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Jan | 36.5 °C | 13 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 15 Jan | 36.9 °C | 9 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 16 Jan | 36.8 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 17 Jan | 38.1 °C | 13 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 18 Jan | 37.0 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 19 Jan | 36.4 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 20 Jan after | 36.3 °C | 11 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 21 Jan after | 34.1 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 Jan after | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 24 Jan after | 37.8 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 25 Jan after | 38.8 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 26 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Jan after | 39.1 °C | 13 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 28 Jan after | 37.8 °C | 14 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 29 Jan after | 37.7 °C | 14 % | 36 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.
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 · 704Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 17,434 haVassako31 December 2025 · 31 days · 8 km away
- 21,782 haVassako21 December 2016 · 21 days · 10 km away
- 65,183 haVassako31 December 2025 · 31 days · 22 km away
- 36,480 haVassako4 January 2021 · 34 days · 25 km away
- 17,022 haVassako3 January 2024 · 27 days · 26 km away
- 95,872 haVassako25 December 2022 · 36 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Vassako fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 December 2020 to 19 January 2021 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2021 to 12 January 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,313 hectares (213.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Vassako (21,447 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.
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.
Report an error
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 2021 to 12 January 2021. 704 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.
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.