How long did the Yalinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 December 2021 to 31 December 2021 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2021 to 27 December 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,467 hectares (164.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yalinga (16,603 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2021-12-10 → 2021-12-31

Yalinga fire, 10 December 2021 Yalinga

Out · last detection 27 Dec 2021, 11:45 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2021 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,467 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 80th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 373 with a page). Number 17 in Central African Republic in 2021, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2016 Yalinga · 2025 Yalinga · 2021 Yalinga · 2021

Burnt area: 16,467ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 10 Dec 2021 – 31 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 10 Dec; 2021
Heat detections: 570; in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 192MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec31 Dec

Play back 27 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Dec 13 Dec 17 Dec 20 Dec 21 Dec 23 Dec 26 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

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,943 ha in 2016, 5,878 ha in 2017, 3,942 ha in 2018, 9,103 ha in 2019, 2,217 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,928 ha that had burned before.

869 ha Yalinga fire, December 2016 5,564 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (165 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

16,603 ha reached on 10 Dec

0.4 %

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)
10 Dec	34.1 °C	13 %	39 km/h	Very high 48
11 Dec	34.8 °C	17 %	41 km/h	Very high 50
12 Dec	35.2 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Extreme 50
13 Dec	35.7 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Dec	35.8 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Very high 48
15 Dec	34.9 °C	16 %	39 km/h	Extreme 50
16 Dec	33.8 °C	16 %	44 km/h	Extreme 54
17 Dec	33.4 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
18 Dec	32.4 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Extreme 51
19 Dec	32.8 °C	16 %	36 km/h	Very high 50
20 Dec	32.5 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Dec	32.3 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 56
22 Dec	32.0 °C	15 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Dec	32.9 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Dec	33.6 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 51
25 Dec	33.4 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
26 Dec	34.5 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Dec	33.6 °C	13 %	33 km/h	Extreme 51
28 Dec	34.6 °C	17 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
29 Dec	33.5 °C	15 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
30 Dec	33.4 °C	19 %	39 km/h	Extreme 50
31 Dec	34.1 °C	18 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
1 Jan after	33.8 °C	19 %	23 km/h	Very high 41
2 Jan after	33.2 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
3 Jan after	31.3 °C	15 %	45 km/h	Extreme 55
4 Jan after	31.0 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
5 Jan after	31.9 °C	16 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
6 Jan after	33.4 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Very high 50
7 Jan after	34.8 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Extreme 51
8 Jan after	35.4 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Jan after	36.5 °C	14 %	33 km/h	Extreme 50
10 Jan after	36.1 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Dec 2021

After · 7 Jan 2022

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 · 570Every 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 10 December 2021 to 31 December 2021 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2021 to 27 December 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,467 hectares (164.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yalinga (16,603 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 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

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

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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 17 December 2021 to 27 December 2021. 570 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