Bulungu fire, 24 July 2017 Bulungu
The fire started on 24 July 2017 in Bulungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,457 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 160th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 72 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,457ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 24 Jul 2017 – 8 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 24 Jul
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 280
- in a single hotspot: 223 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 357MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 9 Aug.
This area had burned before
54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,496 ha in 2016.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bulungu where it started6,498 ha reached on 24 Jul0.5 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Jul | 32.2 °C | 48 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Jul | 33.8 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 29 Jul | 30.5 °C | 47 % | 24 km/h | 2.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 30 Jul | 32.8 °C | 39 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 31 Jul | 33.0 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Aug | 33.0 °C | 39 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 2 Aug | 33.2 °C | 40 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 3 Aug | 33.2 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 3.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 4 Aug | 31.9 °C | 47 % | 32 km/h | 4.2 mm | Very low 5 |
| 5 Aug | 28.6 °C | 56 % | 30 km/h | 0.9 mm | Low 8 |
| 6 Aug | 30.0 °C | 53 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 7 Aug | 33.1 °C | 42 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 8 Aug | 32.1 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 9 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 48 % | 27 km/h | 4.4 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 280Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,735 haBulungu14 July 2016 · 35 days · 15 km away
- 27,258 haBulungu30 July 2024 · 24 days · 18 km away
- 51,190 haBulungu20 July 2020 · 33 days · 19 km away
- 305,095 haBulungu27 July 2026 · 50 days · 26 km away
- 27,007 haBulungu3 August 2026 · 26 days · 29 km away
- 28,229 haBulungu20 July 2020 · 33 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bulungu fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 July 2017 to 8 August 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2017 to 4 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,457 hectares (64.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bulungu (6,498 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 4 August 2017 → 8 August 2017.
- Start date: 27 July 2017 → 24 July 2017.
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
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 27 July 2017 to 4 August 2017. 280 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.