How long did the Yalinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 January 2025 to 16 January 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 January 2025 to 12 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,163 hectares (121.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yalinga (11,356 ha, 0.3 %); Djema (896 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 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.

CF · Central African Republic · 2025-01-02 → 2025-01-16

Yalinga fire, 2 January 2025 Yalinga, Djema

Out · last detection 17 Jan 2025, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2025 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,163 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 115th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 46 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 144.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2021 Yalinga · 2016 Yalinga · 2021 Yalinga · 2018

Burnt area: 12,163ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 2 Jan 2025 – 16 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; sub-prefectures
Started on: 2 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 555; in a single hotspot: 351 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 327MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan16 Jan

Play back 17 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 9 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan 17 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

46km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,476 ha in 2016, 1,027 ha in 2017, 1,875 ha in 2018, 2,658 ha in 2019, 800 ha in 2020, 4,874 ha in 2021, 528 ha in 2022, 1,020 ha in 2023, 168 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,850 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.7% of the area of London (122 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

11,356 ha reached on 2 Jan

0.3 %
Djema

896 ha reached on 5 Jan

0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
2 Jan	32.4 °C	12 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
3 Jan	34.1 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
4 Jan	36.6 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
5 Jan	36.8 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
6 Jan	34.7 °C	11 %	46 km/h	Extreme 60
7 Jan	33.9 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 59
8 Jan	34.3 °C	10 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
9 Jan	34.6 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 52
10 Jan	35.1 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Extreme 57
11 Jan	33.8 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
12 Jan	33.2 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 59
13 Jan	33.8 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
14 Jan	34.8 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 54
15 Jan	36.0 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 55
16 Jan	36.1 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 57
17 Jan after	36.3 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
18 Jan after	37.2 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Extreme 55
19 Jan after	35.9 °C	17 %	25 km/h	Extreme 51
20 Jan after	36.4 °C	15 %	21 km/h	Very high 47
21 Jan after	36.1 °C	13 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
22 Jan after	36.3 °C	10 %	26 km/h	Extreme 54
23 Jan after	35.6 °C	9 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
24 Jan after	34.6 °C	11 %	47 km/h	Extreme 63
25 Jan after	34.4 °C	9 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
26 Jan after	34.7 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Dec 2024

After · 23 Jan 2025

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 8 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak101 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10110 µg/m³

Optical depth1.25

WHO 15

3112345678910111213141516171819

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 · 555Every 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 2 January 2025 to 16 January 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 January 2025 to 12 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,163 hectares (121.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yalinga (11,356 ha, 0.3 %); Djema (896 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 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

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 3 January 2025 to 12 January 2025. 555 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