How long did the Ango fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 January 2022 to 14 February 2022 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 February 2022 to 10 February 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,007 hectares (80.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ango (8,062 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2022-01-29 → 2022-02-14

Ango fire, January 2022 Ango

Out · last detection 14 Feb 2022, 11:24 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2022 in Ango, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,007 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Lower Uele since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 33 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ango · 2019 Ango · 2018 Ango · 2024 Ango · 2017

Burnt area: 8,007ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 29 Jan 2022 – 14 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 29 Jan; 2022
Heat detections: 281; in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 350MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan14 Feb

Play back 14 Feb 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jan 2 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 13 Feb

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

37km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,285 ha in 2016, 1,672 ha in 2017, 2,333 ha in 2018, 3,677 ha in 2019, 2,324 ha in 2020, 3,628 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,077 ha that had burned before.

2,292 ha Ango fire, January 2019 8,875 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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

Ango where it started

8,062 ha reached on 29 Jan

0.2 %

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.

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)
5 Feb	33.0 °C	18 %	22 km/h	High 36
6 Feb	34.1 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
7 Feb	35.0 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Very high 47
8 Feb	35.9 °C	8 %	32 km/h	Very high 47
9 Feb	36.6 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Very high 46
10 Feb	37.2 °C	12 %	21 km/h	Very high 42
11 Feb	36.5 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
12 Feb	36.9 °C	11 %	24 km/h	Very high 49
13 Feb	37.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Feb	36.1 °C	16 %	26 km/h	Very high 46
15 Feb after	36.1 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Very high 44
16 Feb after	35.6 °C	17 %	22 km/h	Very high 44
17 Feb after	36.3 °C	17 %	23 km/h	Very high 44
18 Feb after	36.1 °C	21 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
19 Feb after	36.0 °C	20 %	24 km/h	Very high 46
20 Feb after	34.7 °C	9 %	27 km/h	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jan 2022

After · 21 Feb 2022

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 · 281Every 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ango fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 January 2022 to 14 February 2022 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 February 2022 to 10 February 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,007 hectares (80.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ango (8,062 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo (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: 10 February 2022 → 14 February 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 5 February 2022 → 29 January 2022.

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 5 February 2022 to 10 February 2022. 281 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.

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 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.

Where it burned