How long did the Yalinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 January 2026 to 9 March 2026 (42 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 January 2026 to 6 March 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 87,474 hectares (874.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yalinga (88,022 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 · 2026-01-27 → 2026-03-09

Yalinga fire, 27 January 2026 Yalinga

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2026, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2026 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 42 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 87,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 4 in Central African Republic in 2026, of 148.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 87,474ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 42days; 27 Jan 2026 – 9 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 27 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 2,293; in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 378MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan9 Mar

Play back 9 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jan 2 Feb 8 Feb 15 Feb 21 Feb 27 Feb 5 Mar

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

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 37,378 ha in 2016, 40,392 ha in 2017, 47,741 ha in 2018, 10,278 ha in 2019, 95,281 ha in 2020, 12,467 ha in 2021, 97,576 ha in 2022, 13,005 ha in 2023, 43,453 ha in 2024, 40,672 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 82,241 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 55% of the area of London (875 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

88,022 ha reached on 27 Jan

2.1 %

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)
31 Jan	36.4 °C	11 %	25 km/h	Extreme 52
1 Feb	35.0 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Very high 47
2 Feb	36.4 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
3 Feb	37.0 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
4 Feb	36.9 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 61
5 Feb	37.9 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
6 Feb	34.4 °C	23 %	23 km/h	Very high 43
7 Feb	36.8 °C	11 %	20 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Feb	36.6 °C	8 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
9 Feb	35.1 °C	18 %	28 km/h	Very high 48
10 Feb	35.2 °C	18 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
11 Feb	36.4 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
12 Feb	36.7 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Very high 46
13 Feb	37.1 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Very high 46
14 Feb	36.2 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
15 Feb	37.1 °C	8 %	35 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Feb	37.8 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Very high 49
17 Feb	37.8 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 49
18 Feb	34.5 °C	21 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
19 Feb	35.2 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Very high 45
20 Feb	35.7 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
21 Feb	37.2 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Feb	36.3 °C	10 %	27 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Feb	35.8 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 55
24 Feb	35.2 °C	8 %	34 km/h	Extreme 59
25 Feb	35.0 °C	8 %	40 km/h	Extreme 60
26 Feb	35.1 °C	8 %	39 km/h	Extreme 59
27 Feb	35.4 °C	7 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55
28 Feb	35.3 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
1 Mar	34.3 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jan 2026

After · 16 Mar 2026

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 9 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak117 µg/m³

Days over the guideline24 days

PM10206 µg/m³

Optical depth0.90

WHO 15

29303112345678910111213141516171819202122

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 · 2,293Every 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 27 January 2026 to 9 March 2026 (42 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 January 2026 to 6 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 87,474 hectares (874.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yalinga (88,022 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 January 2026 to 6 March 2026. 2,293 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