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Yalinga fire, 18 December 2018 Yalinga

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2018, 23:43 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2018 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,016 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 370th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 80 in Central African Republic in 2018, of 81.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2024Yalinga · 2018Yalinga · 2020

Burnt area
5,016ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
18 Dec 2018 – 24 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
18 Dec
2018
Heat detections
147
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
187MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec24 Dec
21 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

18 Dec 2018 · 293 MW · 21 19 Dec 2018 · 245 MW · 48 20 Dec 2018 · 81 MW · 27 21 Dec 2018 · 130 MW · 51
18 Dec 19 Dec 20 Dec 21 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

33°high
41km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,687 ha in 2016, 2,923 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,745 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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
    5,051 ha reached on 18 Dec
    0.1 %

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)
18 Dec 32.9 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Dec 33.3 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec 32.6 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Dec 32.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec 32.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Dec 32.5 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Dec 32.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Dec after 34.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Dec after 35.0 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Dec after 35.2 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Dec after 34.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec after 34.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Dec after 33.8 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Dec after 33.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Jan after 33.6 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jan after 35.8 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Jan after 34.6 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Dec 2018
After · 31 Dec 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 · 147Every 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 18 December 2018 and 24 December 2018: 7 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 5,016 hectares (50.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (5,051 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 147 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.