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Yalinga fire, 23 December 2016 Yalinga

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2017, 23:43 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2016 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,676 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 62th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 23 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2025Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2018Yalinga · 2022

Burnt area
21,676ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
23 Dec 2016 – 16 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
23 Dec
2016
Heat detections
854
in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
190MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec16 Jan
16 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

23 Dec 2016 · 52 MW · 13 24 Dec 2016 · 21 MW · 5 25 Dec 2016 · 204 MW · 20 26 Dec 2016 · 2 MW · 1 27 Dec 2016 · 9 MW · 2 28 Dec 2016 · 91 MW · 6 29 Dec 2016 · 72 MW · 11 30 Dec 2016 · 152 MW · 17 31 Dec 2016 · 188 MW · 57 1 Jan 2017 · 72 MW · 14 2 Jan 2017 · 307 MW · 56 3 Jan 2017 · 708 MW · 127 4 Jan 2017 · 1,006 MW · 136 5 Jan 2017 · 374 MW · 157 6 Jan 2017 · 28 MW · 15 7 Jan 2017 · 320 MW · 31 8 Jan 2017 · 262 MW · 27 9 Jan 2017 · 407 MW · 61 10 Jan 2017 · 160 MW · 65 11 Jan 2017 · 24 MW · 6 12 Jan 2017 · 5 MW · 2 13 Jan 2017 · 4 MW · 1 14 Jan 2017 · 37 MW · 3 15 Jan 2017 · 11 MW · 4 16 Jan 2017 · 225 MW · 17
23 Dec 27 Dec 31 Dec 4 Jan 8 Jan 12 Jan 16 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (217 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
    21,796 ha reached on 23 Dec
    0.5 %

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)
23 Dec 36.3 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Dec 36.8 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Dec 35.5 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Dec 34.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Dec 34.6 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 34.6 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Dec 34.6 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Dec 35.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Jan 36.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Jan 34.4 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan 34.4 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jan 35.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Jan 35.4 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jan 36.5 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jan 36.5 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Jan 36.6 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jan 35.6 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Jan 35.7 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Jan 35.8 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan 36.7 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Jan 36.7 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
14 Jan 36.7 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Jan 37.3 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan 38.3 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
17 Jan after 38.6 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Jan after 38.5 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
19 Jan after 38.4 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan after 38.1 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Jan after 38.3 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 Jan after 38.2 °C 10 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Jan after 38.2 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Jan after 37.3 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Jan after 36.2 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Jan after 35.7 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Dec 2016
After · 23 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 · 854Every 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 23 December 2016 to 16 January 2017 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 December 2016 to 11 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,676 hectares (216.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (21,796 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 December 2016 to 11 January 2017. 854 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.