How long did the Zina fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 December 2016 to 14 January 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 January 2017 to 9 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,392 hectares (13.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zina (1,400 ha, 1.3 %).

Where does this data come from?

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

CM · Cameroon · 2016-12-27 → 2017-01-14

Zina fire, 27 December 2016 Zina

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2017, 00:58 UTC

The fire started on 27 December 2016 in Zina, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,392 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 143th largest in Far North since 2016 (of 340 with a page). Number 132 in Cameroon in 2016, of 306.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zina · 2016 Zina · 2025 Waza · 2017 Logone-Birni · 2026

Burnt area: 1,392ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 27 Dec 2016 – 14 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 27 Dec; 2016
Heat detections: 62; in a single hotspot: 79 MW
Average daily power: 68MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Dec14 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

28 Dec 3 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 13 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 265 ha in 2016.

265 ha Zina fire, January 2016 1,110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 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

Zina where it started

1,400 ha reached on 28 Dec

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Dec 2016

After · 21 Jan 2017

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 · 62Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zina fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 December 2016 to 14 January 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 January 2017 to 9 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,392 hectares (13.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zina (1,400 ha, 1.3 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 January 2017 → 14 January 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 January 2017 → 27 December 2016.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 2017 to 9 January 2017. 62 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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