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Yalinga fire, 20 December 2016 Yalinga

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2017, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2016 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,436 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 14 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2016Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2018

Burnt area
29,436ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
20 Dec 2016 – 19 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
20 Dec
2016
Heat detections
1,193
in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
259MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec19 Jan
19 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

20 Dec 2016 · 85 MW · 8 21 Dec 2016 · 83 MW · 5 22 Dec 2016 · 43 MW · 8 23 Dec 2016 · 14 MW · 2 24 Dec 2016 · 144 MW · 18 25 Dec 2016 · 244 MW · 47 26 Dec 2016 · 14 MW · 10 27 Dec 2016 · 885 MW · 126 28 Dec 2016 · 1,321 MW · 111 29 Dec 2016 · 414 MW · 92 30 Dec 2016 · 289 MW · 19 31 Dec 2016 · 178 MW · 77 1 Jan 2017 · 156 MW · 30 2 Jan 2017 · 112 MW · 29 3 Jan 2017 · 498 MW · 77 4 Jan 2017 · 491 MW · 93 5 Jan 2017 · 603 MW · 162 6 Jan 2017 · 107 MW · 31 7 Jan 2017 · 259 MW · 49 8 Jan 2017 · 472 MW · 40 9 Jan 2017 · 189 MW · 45 10 Jan 2017 · 192 MW · 64 11 Jan 2017 · 55 MW · 18 12 Jan 2017 · 29 MW · 4 15 Jan 2017 · 26 MW · 4 16 Jan 2017 · 57 MW · 18 19 Jan 2017 · 31 MW · 6
20 Dec 24 Dec 28 Dec 1 Jan 5 Jan 9 Jan 15 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

39°high
50km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,509 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (294 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. Yalinga where it started
    29,603 ha reached on 20 Dec
    0.7 %

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)
20 Dec 34.9 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Dec 35.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Dec 36.4 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Dec 36.9 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Dec 35.8 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Dec 34.8 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Dec 34.4 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 34.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec 35.0 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec 35.7 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 36.1 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Jan 34.6 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Jan 34.8 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Jan 35.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Jan 35.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
6 Jan 36.7 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jan 36.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan 36.6 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Jan 35.8 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Jan 35.8 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan 36.1 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Jan 37.0 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
13 Jan 36.9 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
14 Jan 37.1 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Jan 37.5 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan 38.5 °C 8 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
17 Jan 38.8 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
18 Jan 38.4 °C 8 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Jan 38.5 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan after 38.3 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Jan after 38.4 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
22 Jan after 38.3 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
23 Jan after 38.6 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
24 Jan after 37.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Jan after 36.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Jan after 36.2 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Jan after 36.7 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Jan after 36.7 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Jan after 34.6 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Dec 2016
After · 26 Jan 2017

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 · 1,193Every 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 Yalinga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 December 2016 to 19 January 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 December 2016 to 12 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 29,436 hectares (294.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (29,603 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 December 2016 to 12 January 2017. 1,193 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.