How long did the Bulungu fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2025 to 3 September 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2025 to 27 August 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,723 hectares (77.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bulungu (6,329 ha, 0.5 %); Bagata (1,440 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2025-08-05 → 2025-09-03

Bulungu fire, 5 August 2025 Bulungu, Bagata

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2025, 12:46 UTC

The fire started on 5 August 2025 in Bulungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,723 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 117th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 235 with a page). Number 52 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 118.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bulungu · 2023 Bulungu · 2026 Bagata · 2026 Bulungu · 2026

Burnt area: 7,723ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 5 Aug 2025 – 3 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 5 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 465; in a single hotspot: 140 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 216MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Aug3 Sept

Play back 3 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

5 Aug 11 Aug 15 Aug 19 Aug 23 Aug 27 Aug 3 Sept

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

33km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.6 mm on 11 Sept.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,839 ha in 2016, 4,157 ha in 2017, 2,028 ha in 2018, 1,634 ha in 2019, 2,893 ha in 2020, 1,919 ha in 2022, 4,320 ha in 2023, 4,080 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,803 ha that had burned before.

4,040 ha Bulungu fire, August 2023 6,138 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (77 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

Bulungu where it started

6,329 ha reached on 5 Aug

0.5 %
Bagata

1,440 ha reached on 8 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 area0.95 ha

Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.95 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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)
5 Aug	34.4 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Aug	34.1 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Aug	34.2 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Aug	33.9 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Aug	32.1 °C	39 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Aug	35.7 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Aug	35.3 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Aug	34.0 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
13 Aug	32.4 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 21
14 Aug	33.4 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Aug	33.9 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Aug	35.7 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Aug	36.3 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Aug	35.1 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Aug	34.4 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Aug	35.5 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Aug	34.7 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
22 Aug	34.9 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Aug	35.8 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Aug	35.5 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug	35.2 °C	32 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Aug	36.7 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Aug	36.0 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
28 Aug	33.9 °C	42 %	26 km/h	5.7 mm	Low 6
29 Aug	36.6 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
30 Aug	34.8 °C	35 %	26 km/h	1.1 mm	High 22
31 Aug	33.1 °C	46 %	30 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 9
1 Sept	35.0 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
2 Sept	36.6 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Sept	34.5 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Sept after	33.0 °C	42 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
5 Sept after	35.2 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
6 Sept after	36.5 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
7 Sept after	35.8 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
8 Sept after	35.5 °C	40 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
9 Sept after	34.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
10 Sept after	35.4 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.9 mm	High 23
11 Sept after	32.0 °C	50 %	23 km/h	8.6 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Jul 2025

After · 10 Sept 2025

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 19 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 141 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 96: 6.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak141 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10145 µg/m³

Optical depth2.12

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 465Every 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 Bulungu fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2025 to 3 September 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2025 to 27 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,723 hectares (77.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bulungu (6,329 ha, 0.5 %); Bagata (1,440 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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: 27 August 2025 → 3 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 11 August 2025 → 5 August 2025.

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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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 11 August 2025 to 27 August 2025. 465 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