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Yalinga fire, 2 January 2023 Yalinga

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2023, 12:16 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2023 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 71,169 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 373 with a page). Number 2 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 58.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2018

Burnt area
71,169ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
2 Jan 2023 – 23 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
2 Jan
2023
Heat detections
4,271
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan23 Jan
24 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 2023 · 184 MW · 33 3 Jan 2023 · 205 MW · 38 4 Jan 2023 · 990 MW · 94 5 Jan 2023 · 3,055 MW · 361 6 Jan 2023 · 922 MW · 292 7 Jan 2023 · 1,278 MW · 201 8 Jan 2023 · 831 MW · 134 9 Jan 2023 · 1,302 MW · 172 10 Jan 2023 · 1,083 MW · 203 11 Jan 2023 · 1,583 MW · 391 12 Jan 2023 · 418 MW · 130 13 Jan 2023 · 859 MW · 224 14 Jan 2023 · 1,484 MW · 172 15 Jan 2023 · 1,592 MW · 227 16 Jan 2023 · 675 MW · 159 17 Jan 2023 · 2,764 MW · 526 18 Jan 2023 · 481 MW · 99 19 Jan 2023 · 983 MW · 81 20 Jan 2023 · 1,435 MW · 103 21 Jan 2023 · 929 MW · 115 22 Jan 2023 · 1,638 MW · 231 23 Jan 2023 · 1,363 MW · 203 24 Jan 2023 · 1,963 MW · 82
2 Jan 5 Jan 6 Jan 10 Jan 14 Jan 18 Jan 22 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 41,065 ha in 2016, 31,428 ha in 2017, 27,775 ha in 2018, 42,864 ha in 2019, 113,667 ha in 2020, 1,431 ha in 2021, 43,650 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 71,502 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 45% of the area of London (712 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
    71,565 ha
    1.7 %

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)
2 Jan 34.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Jan 34.2 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Jan 33.9 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
6 Jan 34.3 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jan 34.3 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan 34.4 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Jan 35.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Jan 34.2 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan 34.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Jan 33.9 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan 34.3 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Jan 34.5 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Jan 34.2 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan 35.0 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Jan 35.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Jan 35.1 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Jan 35.8 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Jan 36.6 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Jan 36.9 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Jan 36.3 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Jan 35.6 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jan after 36.9 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Jan after 35.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Jan after 36.2 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Jan after 37.5 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Jan after 36.6 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Jan after 37.4 °C 8 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Jan after 36.4 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Jan after 36.9 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Feb after 37.3 °C 7 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Feb after 35.0 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2022
After · 30 Jan 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 145 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak145 µg/m³
Days over the guideline27 days
PM10208 µg/m³
Optical depth1.91
311234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 0Every 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 2 January 2023 and 23 January 2023: 22 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 71,169 hectares (711.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (71,565 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 30 December 2022 → 2 January 2023.

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; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.