How long did the Vokouma fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 November 2017 to 2 December 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2017 to 30 November 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,617 hectares (76.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Vokouma (7,669 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2017-11-18 → 2017-12-02

Vokouma fire, 18 November 2017 Vokouma

Out · last detection 1 Dec 2017, 11:26 UTC

The fire started on 18 November 2017 in Vokouma, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,617 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Vakaga since 2016 (of 72 with a page). Number 47 in Central African Republic in 2017, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vokouma · 2025 Vokouma · 2019 Vokouma · 2017 Vokouma · 2019

Burnt area: 7,617ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 18 Nov 2017 – 2 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 18 Nov; 2017
Heat detections: 202; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 74MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Nov2 Dec

Play back 1 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Nov 21 Nov 23 Nov 25 Nov 27 Nov 29 Nov 1 Dec

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

41km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,256 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 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

Vokouma where it started

7,669 ha reached on 18 Nov

0.9 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
18 Nov	33.9 °C	38 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Nov	34.2 °C	43 %	27 km/h	4.3 mm	Very low 5
20 Nov	33.4 °C	41 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 13
21 Nov	35.2 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
22 Nov	34.2 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Nov	33.4 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Nov	33.1 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Nov	33.7 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Nov	34.4 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Nov	34.4 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Nov	35.0 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Nov	35.8 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Nov	35.8 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Dec	35.3 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Dec	35.3 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Dec after	35.6 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
4 Dec after	36.3 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
5 Dec after	36.2 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Dec after	36.0 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Dec after	35.6 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
8 Dec after	33.9 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
9 Dec after	34.8 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 Dec after	36.0 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Dec after	36.8 °C	18 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
12 Dec after	36.8 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Nov 2017

After · 9 Dec 2017

Before After

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 · 202Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Vokouma fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 November 2017 to 2 December 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2017 to 30 November 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,617 hectares (76.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Vokouma (7,669 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 22 November 2017 to 30 November 2017. 202 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned