How long did the Yalinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 February 2023 to 26 February 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 February 2023 to 23 February 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 53,114 hectares (531.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yalinga (53,361 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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 · 2023-02-08 → 2023-02-26

Yalinga fire, 8 February 2023 Yalinga

Out · last detection 26 Feb 2023, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 8 February 2023 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 53,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 31th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 4 in Central African Republic in 2023, of 53.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2017 Yalinga · 2022 Yalinga · 2026 Yalinga · 2022

Burnt area: 53,114ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 8 Feb 2023 – 26 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 8 Feb; 2023
Heat detections: 2,109; in a single hotspot: 332 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 861MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Feb26 Feb

Play back 26 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Feb 11 Feb 14 Feb 15 Feb 17 Feb 20 Feb 23 Feb 26 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

45km/h · peak gust

8%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: 21,000 ha in 2016, 34,542 ha in 2017, 17,617 ha in 2018, 40,763 ha in 2019, 80,165 ha in 2020, 607 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 53,387 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 34% of the area of London (531 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

53,361 ha reached on 8 Feb

1.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.37 ha

Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of built-up land and about 90 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
9 Feb	36.4 °C	8 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
10 Feb	37.0 °C	9 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
11 Feb	38.0 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
12 Feb	38.3 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
13 Feb	37.0 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
14 Feb	37.0 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
15 Feb	37.1 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
16 Feb	34.2 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
17 Feb	34.3 °C	10 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
18 Feb	34.6 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
19 Feb	36.6 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
20 Feb	37.3 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
21 Feb	37.6 °C	12 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
22 Feb	38.2 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
23 Feb	35.6 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
24 Feb	37.2 °C	13 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
25 Feb	36.4 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
26 Feb	36.5 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 45
27 Feb after	36.7 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 Feb after	37.2 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
1 Mar after	35.5 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
2 Mar after	35.3 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Mar after	35.6 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Mar after	37.7 °C	8 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
5 Mar after	39.4 °C	6 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Feb 2023

After · 5 Mar 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 167 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 94: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak167 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10239 µg/m³

Optical depth1.45

WHO 15

7891011121314151617181920212223242526

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 · 2,109Every 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 8 February 2023 to 26 February 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 February 2023 to 23 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 53,114 hectares (531.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yalinga (53,361 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

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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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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 9 February 2023 to 23 February 2023. 2,109 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 2025, 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