How long did the Youndouo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 December 2017 to 1 January 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 December 2017 to 30 December 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,028 hectares (40.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Youndouo (4,054 ha, 2.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CI · Côte d’Ivoire · 2017-12-17 → 2018-01-01

Youndouo fire, 17 December 2017 Youndouo

Out · last detection 1 Jan 2018, 13:26 UTC

The fire started on 17 December 2017 in Youndouo, Côte d’Ivoire, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,028 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 85th largest in Zanzan since 2016 (of 774 with a page). Number 20 in Côte d’Ivoire in 2017, of 174.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 4,028ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 17 Dec 2017 – 1 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; sub-prefectures
Started on: 17 Dec; 2017
Heat detections: 152; in a single hotspot: 171 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 160MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Dec1 Jan

Play back 1 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Dec 23 Dec 25 Dec 27 Dec 28 Dec 29 Dec 31 Dec

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

36km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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

Youndouo where it started

4,054 ha reached on 17 Dec

2.4 %

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 2015

Built-up area4.7 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.7 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
17 Dec	36.4 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Dec	37.0 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Dec	33.6 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Dec	33.7 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
21 Dec	35.1 °C	16 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
22 Dec	32.5 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Dec	33.5 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Dec	34.2 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Dec	34.7 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Dec	34.7 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
27 Dec	35.9 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Dec	36.3 °C	20 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Dec	34.9 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
30 Dec	35.5 °C	16 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Dec	34.3 °C	12 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Jan	34.5 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
2 Jan after	33.7 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Jan after	33.1 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Jan after	33.9 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
5 Jan after	34.3 °C	11 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Jan after	34.4 °C	12 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
7 Jan after	34.6 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Jan after	35.9 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Jan after	35.6 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
10 Jan after	35.3 °C	6 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
11 Jan after	35.2 °C	10 %	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 · 10 Dec 2017

After · 8 Jan 2018

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.

Detections table · 152Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Youndouo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 December 2017 to 1 January 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 December 2017 to 30 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,028 hectares (40.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Youndouo (4,054 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire (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.

Emergency number: 180 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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

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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 really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 180.

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 21 December 2017 to 30 December 2017. 152 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 2015, 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