How long did the Yalinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2018 to 1 February 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,667 hectares (76.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yalinga (7,715 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2018-01-15 → 2018-02-01

Yalinga fire, 15 January 2018 Yalinga

Out · last detection 1 Feb 2018, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 15 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 7,667 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 191th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 48 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2016 Yalinga · 2022 Yalinga · 2022 Yalinga · 2025

Burnt area: 7,667ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 15 Jan 2018 – 1 Feb 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 15 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 277; in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 127MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan1 Feb

Play back 1 Feb 2018

How it evolved, day by day

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

44km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,380 ha in 2016, 28 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,926 ha that had burned before.

2,025 ha Yalinga fire, January 2016 5,981 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (77 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

Yalinga where it started

7,715 ha reached on 15 Jan

0.2 %

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	Danger (FWI)
15 Jan	33.8 °C	14 %	32 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Jan	34.0 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
17 Jan	34.2 °C	9 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
18 Jan	34.0 °C	11 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
19 Jan	34.1 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 53
20 Jan	34.1 °C	12 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
21 Jan	34.8 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 51
22 Jan	36.1 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Jan	35.5 °C	10 %	41 km/h	Extreme 59
24 Jan	33.9 °C	10 %	27 km/h	Extreme 53
25 Jan	34.2 °C	11 %	27 km/h	Extreme 51
26 Jan	33.8 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Extreme 55
27 Jan	34.3 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 60
28 Jan	34.2 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 59
29 Jan	34.2 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 59
30 Jan	34.2 °C	10 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
31 Jan	33.8 °C	11 %	44 km/h	Extreme 62
1 Feb	34.5 °C	11 %	42 km/h	Extreme 61
2 Feb after	35.6 °C	10 %	40 km/h	Extreme 60
3 Feb after	36.2 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 61
4 Feb after	36.1 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
5 Feb after	37.3 °C	10 %	33 km/h	Extreme 56
6 Feb after	38.3 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 59
7 Feb after	39.1 °C	10 %	41 km/h	Extreme 61
8 Feb after	39.2 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 62
9 Feb after	38.5 °C	11 %	27 km/h	Extreme 54
10 Feb after	37.6 °C	12 %	23 km/h	Extreme 55
11 Feb after	37.0 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Jan 2018

After · 8 Feb 2018

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 · 277Every 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 Yalinga fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2018 to 1 February 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,667 hectares (76.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yalinga (7,715 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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

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 19 January 2018 to 26 January 2018. 277 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.

Where it burned