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Ango fire, 19 January 2020 Ango

Out · last detection 22 Jan 2020, 22:59 UTC

The fire started on 19 January 2020 in Ango, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,024 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Lower Uele since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 62 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2020, of 165.

Burnt area
8,024ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
19 Jan 2020 – 22 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
19 Jan
2020
Heat detections
260
in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Jan 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jan22 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

19202122

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
43km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,344 ha in 2016, 2,553 ha in 2017, 5,375 ha in 2018, 1,472 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,758 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Ango where it started
    8,076 ha reached on 16 Jan
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
19 Jan 34.3 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Jan 34.9 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jan 35.0 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jan 34.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jan after 34.6 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Jan after 33.9 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jan after 34.5 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jan after 34.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jan after 36.3 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jan after 37.1 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jan after 36.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jan after 36.9 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jan after 33.2 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Feb after 34.4 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jan 2020
After · 29 Jan 2020

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 · 260Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ango fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 January 2020 and 22 January 2020: 4 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,024 hectares (80.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ango (8,076 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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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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 ADM2 (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.