How long did the Bagata fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 August 2026 to 28 August 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,250 hectares (72.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bagata (4,570 ha, 0.3 %); Idiofa (2,725 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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 · 2026-08-12 → 2026-08-28

Bagata fire, 12 August 2026 Bagata, Idiofa

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2026, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2026 in Bagata, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,250 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 125th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 286 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Idiofa · 2026 Idiofa · 2026 Bulungu · 2026 Idiofa · 2020

Burnt area: 7,250ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 12 Aug 2026 – 28 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 12 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 193; in a single hotspot: 171 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 193MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug28 Aug

Play back 28 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 16 Aug 19 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 25 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

33km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 29 Aug.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,238 ha in 2016, 1,555 ha in 2020, 651 ha in 2021, 1,412 ha in 2022, 939 ha in 2023, 1,808 ha in 2024, 3,826 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,873 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (72 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

Bagata where it started

4,570 ha reached on 12 Aug

0.3 %
Idiofa

2,725 ha reached on 12 Aug

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area4.1 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.1 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
12 Aug	34.6 °C	39 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
13 Aug	34.4 °C	44 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
14 Aug	33.4 °C	46 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
15 Aug	32.3 °C	43 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Aug	33.3 °C	43 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 Aug	33.8 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
18 Aug	33.8 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
19 Aug	34.2 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Aug	32.7 °C	45 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
21 Aug	32.5 °C	47 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Aug	36.1 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.7 mm	High 26
23 Aug	32.1 °C	56 %	28 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 16
24 Aug	33.5 °C	43 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Aug	34.9 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
26 Aug	32.8 °C	49 %	19 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 21
27 Aug	36.3 °C	35 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Aug	32.4 °C	53 %	33 km/h	4.4 mm	Low 7
29 Aug after	29.6 °C	60 %	28 km/h	3.3 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Aug 2026

After · 4 Sept 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 26 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 291 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 164: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak291 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10299 µg/m³

Optical depth3.13

WHO 15

10111213141516171819202122232425262728293031

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 · 193Every 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 Bagata fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 August 2026 to 28 August 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,250 hectares (72.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bagata (4,570 ha, 0.3 %); Idiofa (2,725 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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 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

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 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 17 August 2026 to 28 August 2026. 193 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 2025, 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 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