Vassako fire, 7 January 2026 Vassako
The fire started on 7 January 2026 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 65,183 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 222 with a page). Number 8 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 161.
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- Burnt area
- 65,183ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 7 Jan 2026 – 30 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 7 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,431
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 637MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 39,760 ha in 2016, 11,409 ha in 2017, 11,802 ha in 2018, 17,923 ha in 2019, 21,431 ha in 2020, 31,016 ha in 2021, 40,043 ha in 2022, 9,570 ha in 2023, 23,231 ha in 2024, 26,776 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 64,582 ha that had burned before.
- 19,869 ha Vassako fire, December 2022 95,872 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 17,206 ha Vassako fire, January 2021 36,480 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,742 ha Vassako fire, January 2024 17,022 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,718 ha Vassako fire, January 2025 8,184 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,129 ha Vassako fire, January 2016 14,429 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,405 ha Vassako fire, February 2019 5,650 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,344 ha Vassako fire, January 2021 21,313 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,843 ha Vassako fire, February 2022 6,532 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 started65,591 ha3.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Jan | 37.8 °C | 7 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 8 Jan | 37.8 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 9 Jan | 37.9 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Jan | 36.2 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 11 Jan | 35.8 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 12 Jan | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 13 Jan | 38.0 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 14 Jan | 37.8 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 15 Jan | 36.6 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 16 Jan | 36.2 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 17 Jan | 36.7 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Jan | 37.7 °C | 9 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Jan | 37.6 °C | 6 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Jan | 37.3 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 21 Jan | 38.1 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 22 Jan | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Jan | 37.5 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Jan | 37.9 °C | 16 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Jan | 39.1 °C | 17 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Jan | 40.1 °C | 11 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 27 Jan | 39.7 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Jan | 38.1 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Jan | 37.8 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 30 Jan | 38.6 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 31 Jan after | 38.3 °C | 13 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Feb after | 37.6 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Feb after | 38.4 °C | 19 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 3 Feb after | 38.7 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Feb after | 40.0 °C | 11 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Feb after | 39.4 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 6 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 7 Feb after | 37.9 °C | 20 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Feb after | 39.6 °C | 9 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Feb after | 38.6 °C | 21 % | 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.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 20 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 182 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 108: 7.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 36,480 haVassako4 January 2021 · 34 days · 6 km away
- 17,022 haVassako3 January 2024 · 27 days · 13 km away
- 95,872 haVassako25 December 2022 · 36 days · 15 km away
- 16,112 haVassako13 January 2024 · 11 days · 19 km away
- 21,313 haVassako5 January 2021 · 8 days · 22 km away
- 21,782 haVassako21 December 2016 · 21 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Vassako fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 January 2026 and 30 January 2026: 24 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 65,183 hectares (651.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Vassako (65,591 ha, 3.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.
- Start date: 31 December 2025 → 7 January 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.