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Bulungu fire, 20 July 2020 Bulungu

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2020, 12:25 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2020 in Bulungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 51,190 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 235 with a page). Number 3 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bulungu · 2016Bulungu · 2019Bulungu · 2018Bulungu · 2016

Burnt area
51,190ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
20 Jul 2020 – 21 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
20 Jul
2020
Heat detections
2,950
in a single hotspot: 275 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul21 Aug
21 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 2020 · 727 MW · 50 21 Jul 2020 · 160 MW · 23 22 Jul 2020 · 35 MW · 6 23 Jul 2020 · 57 MW · 11 24 Jul 2020 · 281 MW · 27 25 Jul 2020 · 417 MW · 34 26 Jul 2020 · 47 MW · 7 27 Jul 2020 · 841 MW · 44 28 Jul 2020 · 812 MW · 53 29 Jul 2020 · 982 MW · 68 30 Jul 2020 · 2,109 MW · 114 31 Jul 2020 · 1,763 MW · 153 1 Aug 2020 · 2,901 MW · 150 2 Aug 2020 · 698 MW · 27 3 Aug 2020 · 3,475 MW · 213 4 Aug 2020 · 2,222 MW · 95 5 Aug 2020 · 4,638 MW · 174 6 Aug 2020 · 3,156 MW · 161 7 Aug 2020 · 2,433 MW · 118 8 Aug 2020 · 3,932 MW · 225 9 Aug 2020 · 143 MW · 24 10 Aug 2020 · 5,548 MW · 274 11 Aug 2020 · 4,780 MW · 215 12 Aug 2020 · 2,197 MW · 115 13 Aug 2020 · 3,515 MW · 240 14 Aug 2020 · 1,537 MW · 64 15 Aug 2020 · 1,869 MW · 86 16 Aug 2020 · 620 MW · 48 17 Aug 2020 · 1,008 MW · 57 18 Aug 2020 · 1,395 MW · 67 19 Aug 2020 · 75 MW · 6 21 Aug 2020 · 5 MW · 1
20 Jul 25 Jul 30 Jul 4 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 14 Aug 19 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

35°high
30km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.6 mm on 22 Aug.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31,259 ha in 2016, 20,326 ha in 2017, 16,643 ha in 2018, 18,042 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 42,106 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (512 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

  1. Bulungu where it started
    51,519 ha reached on 20 Jul
    3.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area44 ha
Residents≈ 4,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 44 hectares of built-up land and about 4,600 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
20 Jul 32.4 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Jul 33.6 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul 34.0 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jul 32.6 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Jul 32.5 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Jul 32.0 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
26 Jul 32.0 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jul 30.7 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
28 Jul 31.6 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Jul 32.9 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jul 33.6 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Jul 33.7 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug 33.1 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug 32.8 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Aug 32.8 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
4 Aug 31.9 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Aug 31.7 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
6 Aug 33.4 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Aug 33.2 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Aug 32.3 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Aug 34.5 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Aug 31.8 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Aug 33.7 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Aug 32.6 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Aug 33.3 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Aug 31.6 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Aug 32.2 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
16 Aug 35.0 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Aug 34.5 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Aug 34.5 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
19 Aug 33.8 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Aug 33.2 °C 46 % 22 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 5
21 Aug 35.2 °C 36 % 23 km/h 3.1 mm Low 9
22 Aug after 30.7 °C 54 % 28 km/h 11.6 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2020
After · 28 Aug 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 · 2,950Every 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bulungu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2020 to 21 August 2020 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2020 to 16 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 51,190 hectares (511.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bulungu (51,519 ha, 3.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 August 2020 → 21 August 2020.
  2. Start date: 27 July 2020 → 20 July 2020.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 July 2020 to 16 August 2020. 2,950 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 2020, 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.