Skip to content
worldfires
en
CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · →

Dungu fire, 9 January 2017 Dungu

Out · last detection 14 Jan 2017, 11:43 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2017 in Dungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 38,040 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Upper Uele since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 2 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dungu · 2016Dungu · 2016Dungu · 2016Dungu · 2026

Burnt area
38,040ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
9 Jan 2017 – 13 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
9 Jan
2017
Heat detections
1,347
in a single hotspot: 214 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
3.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan13 Jan
14 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jan 2017 · 217 MW · 33 10 Jan 2017 · 6,766 MW · 377 11 Jan 2017 · 14,185 MW · 829 12 Jan 2017 · 192 MW · 53 13 Jan 2017 · 153 MW · 20 14 Jan 2017 · 58 MW · 5
9 Jan 10 Jan 11 Jan 12 Jan 13 Jan 14 Jan

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
39km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 25 Jan.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21,918 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 24% of the area of London (380 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. Dungu where it started
    38,308 ha reached on 9 Jan
    1.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
9 Jan 34.8 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Jan 35.1 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jan 35.8 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jan 35.9 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jan 36.0 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Jan after 36.0 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jan after 37.5 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Jan after 38.2 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jan after 38.2 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jan after 37.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan after 37.2 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jan after 38.2 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jan after 36.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Jan after 38.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Jan after 38.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jan after 34.1 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jan after 34.6 °C 30 % 31 km/h 1.6 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jan 2017
After · 20 Jan 2017

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 · 1,347Every 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 Dungu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2017 and 13 January 2017: 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 38,040 hectares (380.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dungu (38,308 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,347 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.

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.