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Yalinga fire, 26 December 2022 Yalinga

Out · last detection 8 Jan 2023, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 26 December 2022 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,179 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 267th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 76 in Central African Republic in 2022, of 97.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
6,179ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
26 Dec 2022 – 8 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
26 Dec
2022
Heat detections
248
in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
121MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Dec8 Jan
8 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

26 Dec 2022 · 2 MW · 1 27 Dec 2022 · 29 MW · 18 28 Dec 2022 · 247 MW · 62 29 Dec 2022 · 206 MW · 30 30 Dec 2022 · 260 MW · 71 31 Dec 2022 · 95 MW · 29 1 Jan 2023 · 351 MW · 33 4 Jan 2023 · 5 MW · 1 6 Jan 2023 · 1 MW · 1 8 Jan 2023 · 11 MW · 2
26 Dec 28 Dec 30 Dec 1 Jan 6 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

33°high
44km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,698 ha in 2016, 1,506 ha in 2017, 262 ha in 2018, 3,025 ha in 2019, 1,140 ha in 2020, 2,968 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,005 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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
    6,231 ha reached on 26 Dec
    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 Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Dec 30.0 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Dec 29.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Dec 30.4 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 31.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Dec 31.9 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Dec 32.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan 32.6 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Jan 33.2 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Jan 32.9 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan 32.4 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan 32.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 32.9 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Jan 32.5 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan 33.3 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Jan after 33.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Jan after 32.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Jan after 32.4 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Jan after 32.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Jan after 32.7 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Jan after 33.1 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan after 33.2 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Jan after 33.2 °C 12 % 42 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 · 19 Dec 2022
After · 15 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 29 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
2425262728293031123456789
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 · 248Every 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 26 December 2022 to 8 January 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 December 2022 to 1 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,179 hectares (61.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (6,231 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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. Last day with fire: 6 January 2023 → 8 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 December 2022 to 1 January 2023. 248 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.