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Ango fire, 29 January 2025 Ango

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2025, 23:38 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2025 in Ango, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 43th largest in Lower Uele since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 115 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2025, of 118.

Burnt area
5,133ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
29 Jan 2025 – 2 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 Jan
2025
Heat detections
179
in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Feb 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan2 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

29303112

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
37km/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

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,512 ha in 2016, 1,252 ha in 2017, 1,610 ha in 2018, 2,385 ha in 2019, 2,718 ha in 2020, 1,933 ha in 2021, 45 ha in 2023, 647 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,138 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Ango where it started
    5,168 ha reached on 29 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)
29 Jan 35.1 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Jan 35.6 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jan 36.0 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Feb 36.9 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Feb 37.6 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Feb after 37.4 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Feb after 35.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Feb after 36.6 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Feb after 36.5 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Feb after 39.3 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Feb after 34.5 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Feb after 36.2 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Feb after 38.8 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Feb after 38.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Feb after 37.2 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jan 2025
After · 9 Feb 2025

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 3 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 93 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak93 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM1096 µg/m³
Optical depth0.72
272829303112345
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 · 179Every 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 29 January 2025 and 2 February 2025: 5 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 5,133 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ango (5,168 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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.