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Yalinga fire, 1 January 2020 Yalinga

Out · last detection 22 Feb 2020, 23:17 UTC

The fire started on 1 January 2020 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 52 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 353,408 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 2th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 2 in Central African Republic in 2020, of 103.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2018Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2026Yalinga · 2022

Burnt area
353,408ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
52days
1 Jan 2020 – 21 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
1 Jan
2020
Heat detections
13,504
in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jan21 Feb
22 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jan 2020 · 782 MW · 65 2 Jan 2020 · 154 MW · 24 3 Jan 2020 · 5 MW · 5 4 Jan 2020 · 91 MW · 30 5 Jan 2020 · 163 MW · 28 6 Jan 2020 · 52 MW · 5 7 Jan 2020 · 117 MW · 20 8 Jan 2020 · 658 MW · 78 9 Jan 2020 · 3,954 MW · 446 10 Jan 2020 · 1,648 MW · 284 11 Jan 2020 · 2,116 MW · 297 12 Jan 2020 · 2,633 MW · 331 13 Jan 2020 · 1,947 MW · 321 14 Jan 2020 · 3,379 MW · 581 15 Jan 2020 · 4,937 MW · 439 16 Jan 2020 · 1,762 MW · 210 17 Jan 2020 · 3,105 MW · 287 18 Jan 2020 · 1,856 MW · 396 19 Jan 2020 · 3,661 MW · 865 20 Jan 2020 · 2,706 MW · 500 21 Jan 2020 · 6,069 MW · 789 22 Jan 2020 · 4,190 MW · 504 23 Jan 2020 · 3,983 MW · 758 24 Jan 2020 · 3,142 MW · 666 25 Jan 2020 · 1,641 MW · 731 26 Jan 2020 · 2,073 MW · 437 27 Jan 2020 · 2,201 MW · 308 28 Jan 2020 · 8,369 MW · 388 29 Jan 2020 · 3,075 MW · 521 30 Jan 2020 · 4,800 MW · 961 31 Jan 2020 · 1,414 MW · 264 1 Feb 2020 · 2,338 MW · 264 2 Feb 2020 · 1,110 MW · 177 3 Feb 2020 · 1,788 MW · 245 4 Feb 2020 · 1,765 MW · 375 5 Feb 2020 · 604 MW · 73 6 Feb 2020 · 187 MW · 44 7 Feb 2020 · 576 MW · 69 8 Feb 2020 · 568 MW · 61 9 Feb 2020 · 355 MW · 69 10 Feb 2020 · 261 MW · 93 11 Feb 2020 · 247 MW · 37 12 Feb 2020 · 606 MW · 48 13 Feb 2020 · 250 MW · 32 14 Feb 2020 · 372 MW · 54 15 Feb 2020 · 307 MW · 80 16 Feb 2020 · 1,130 MW · 84 17 Feb 2020 · 300 MW · 26 18 Feb 2020 · 328 MW · 32 19 Feb 2020 · 104 MW · 18 20 Feb 2020 · 187 MW · 39 21 Feb 2020 · 47 MW · 16 22 Feb 2020 · 103 MW · 29
1 Jan 9 Jan 17 Jan 25 Jan 28 Jan 2 Feb 10 Feb 18 Feb

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
43km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 173,282 ha in 2016, 149,220 ha in 2017, 164,242 ha in 2018, 91,541 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 291,260 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2 times the area of London (3,534 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
    355,462 ha reached on 1 Jan
    8.6 %

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)
7 Jan 34.8 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Jan 35.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Jan 34.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Jan 35.4 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Jan 33.9 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
12 Jan 32.2 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan 33.4 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Jan 35.1 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Jan 37.2 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Jan 37.9 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Jan 37.7 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Jan 34.9 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Jan 33.8 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Jan 33.6 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Jan 33.5 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Jan 32.6 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Jan 31.5 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Jan 31.5 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Jan 32.5 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Jan 33.1 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Jan 34.7 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Jan 36.0 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Jan 35.4 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Jan 35.7 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
31 Jan 34.7 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Feb 34.5 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Feb 35.0 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Feb 36.1 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Feb 36.2 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Feb 35.1 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Feb 35.7 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Feb 37.6 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Feb 37.4 °C 10 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
9 Feb 36.0 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
10 Feb 35.6 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
11 Feb 34.0 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
12 Feb 33.3 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
13 Feb 34.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Feb 36.6 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Feb 37.8 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Feb 38.6 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Feb 37.5 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Dec 2019
After · 28 Feb 2020

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 · 13,504Every 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 1 January 2020 to 21 February 2020 (52 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2020 to 14 February 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 353,408 hectares (3,534.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (355,462 ha, 8.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 January 2020 to 14 February 2020. 13,504 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.