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Yalinga fire, 9 January 2018 Yalinga

Out · last detection 27 Jan 2018, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2018 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,659 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 60th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 18 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2016Yalinga · 2016Yalinga · 2026Yalinga · 2018

Burnt area
23,659ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
9 Jan 2018 – 26 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
9 Jan
2018
Heat detections
999
in a single hotspot: 153 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
500MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan26 Jan
27 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jan 2018 · 401 MW · 39 10 Jan 2018 · 266 MW · 30 11 Jan 2018 · 1,012 MW · 38 12 Jan 2018 · 813 MW · 103 13 Jan 2018 · 2,108 MW · 147 14 Jan 2018 · 1,020 MW · 71 15 Jan 2018 · 118 MW · 33 16 Jan 2018 · 243 MW · 28 17 Jan 2018 · 148 MW · 34 18 Jan 2018 · 44 MW · 13 19 Jan 2018 · 89 MW · 39 20 Jan 2018 · 417 MW · 68 21 Jan 2018 · 422 MW · 69 22 Jan 2018 · 617 MW · 89 23 Jan 2018 · 169 MW · 29 24 Jan 2018 · 701 MW · 80 25 Jan 2018 · 569 MW · 68 26 Jan 2018 · 332 MW · 19 27 Jan 2018 · 16 MW · 2
9 Jan 12 Jan 13 Jan 15 Jan 18 Jan 21 Jan 24 Jan 27 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

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15,592 ha in 2016, 2,732 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,215 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (237 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
    23,783 ha reached on 9 Jan
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
9 Jan 32.5 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Jan 33.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Jan 34.0 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Jan 34.9 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Jan 35.9 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Jan 35.3 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan 33.8 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Jan 34.3 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Jan 34.5 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Jan 34.2 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Jan 34.3 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Jan 34.4 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Jan 34.9 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Jan 36.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Jan 35.6 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Jan 33.9 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Jan 34.3 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
26 Jan 33.9 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Jan after 34.5 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Jan after 34.7 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Jan after 34.6 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Jan after 34.4 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
31 Jan after 34.1 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
1 Feb after 34.7 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
2 Feb after 35.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
3 Feb after 36.4 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
4 Feb after 36.2 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 Feb after 37.4 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jan 2018
After · 2 Feb 2018

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 · 999Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2018 and 26 January 2018: 18 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 23,659 hectares (236.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (23,783 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 999 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 2020, 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.