How long did the Yéngou fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 January 2025 to 31 January 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2025 to 30 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,086 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yéngou (5,126 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 2025-01-18 → 2025-01-31

Yéngou fire, 18 January 2025 Yéngou

Out · last detection 31 Jan 2025, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 18 January 2025 in Yéngou, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,086 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Ouaka since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 139 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 145.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yéngou · 2022 Yéngou · 2016 Vassako · 2021 Yéngou · 2024

Burnt area: 5,086ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 18 Jan 2025 – 31 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 18 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 192; in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start: 50; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 124MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jan31 Jan

Play back 31 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jan 22 Jan 24 Jan 26 Jan 28 Jan 30 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

38°high

36km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,010 ha in 2016, 2,379 ha in 2017, 447 ha in 2018, 3,566 ha in 2019, 3,133 ha in 2020, 886 ha in 2022, 4,015 ha in 2023, 2,121 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,056 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Yéngou where it started

5,126 ha reached on 18 Jan

0.5 %

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
18 Jan	37.6 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
19 Jan	34.8 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
20 Jan	34.6 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Jan	33.6 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Jan	35.8 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Jan	37.1 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Jan	35.6 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
25 Jan	36.0 °C	12 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
26 Jan	36.3 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
27 Jan	36.8 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
28 Jan	36.4 °C	10 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
29 Jan	35.4 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Jan	35.7 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
31 Jan	36.1 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
1 Feb after	36.4 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Feb after	37.0 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Feb after	38.3 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
4 Feb after	38.6 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
5 Feb after	37.3 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
6 Feb after	37.0 °C	19 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Feb after	38.5 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
8 Feb after	34.9 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Feb after	37.0 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Feb after	38.8 °C	13 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jan 2025

After · 7 Feb 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 26 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³

Days over the guideline19 days

PM10157 µg/m³

Optical depth1.00

WHO 15

16171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 192Every 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 Yéngou fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 January 2025 to 31 January 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2025 to 30 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,086 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yéngou (5,126 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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?

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 January 2025 to 30 January 2025. 192 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