Vassako fire, 31 January 2026 Vassako
The fire started on 31 January 2026 in Vassako, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,791 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 97th largest in Bamingui-Bangoran since 2016 (of 223 with a page). Number 73 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 147.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,791ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 31 Jan 2026 – 10 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 31 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 117
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 110MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 12 Feb.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,657 ha in 2016, 1,541 ha in 2017, 3,547 ha in 2018, 523 ha in 2019, 125 ha in 2020, 6,249 ha in 2021, 4,120 ha in 2022, 329 ha in 2023, 3,388 ha in 2024, 2,622 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,798 ha that had burned before.
- 5,647 ha Vassako fire, January 2021 53,841 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,303 ha Vassako fire, December 2016 7,707 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,792 ha Vassako fire, January 2022 7,236 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 19 ha Vassako fire, December 2017 5,013 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 started7,853 ha reached on 31 Jan0.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Feb | 40.6 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 6 Feb | 37.8 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Feb | 38.7 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Feb | 40.3 °C | 5 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 9 Feb | 39.5 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 10 Feb | 38.7 °C | 24 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Feb after | 38.4 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Feb after | 37.2 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 1.5 mm | High 35 |
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 7 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 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 · 117Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 53,841 haVassako6 January 2021 · 28 days · 4 km away
- 11,749 haVassako6 December 2016 · 16 days · 12 km away
- 15,742 haVassako18 December 2021 · 9 days · 18 km away
- 19,251 haVassako29 December 2018 · 22 days · 20 km away
- 16,610 haVassako12 December 2016 · 19 days · 31 km away
- 42,287 haVassako19 December 2025 · 43 days · 33 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 31 January 2026 to 10 February 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 February 2026 to 10 February 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,791 hectares (77.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Vassako (7,853 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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: 5 February 2026 → 31 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 February 2026 to 10 February 2026. 117 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.