How long did the Dungu fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2025 and 18 January 2025: 10 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 64,646 hectares (646.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Dungu (65,067 ha, 1.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 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 Congo - Kinshasa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CD · Congo - Kinshasa · 2025-01-09 → 2025-01-18

Dungu fire, 9 January 2025 Dungu

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2025, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2025 in Dungu, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 64,646 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3th largest in Upper Uele since 2016 (of 101 with a page). The largest in Congo - Kinshasa in 2025, of 118.

Burnt area: 64,646ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 9 Jan 2025 – 18 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 9 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 2,453; in a single hotspot: 191 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Energy released: 29.4GW; sum of detected power

Play back 19 Jan 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan18 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

910111213141516171819

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

38km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21,890 ha in 2016, 36,024 ha in 2017, 18,557 ha in 2018, 25,302 ha in 2019, 13,967 ha in 2020, 24,963 ha in 2021, 1,250 ha in 2022, 6,867 ha in 2023, 13,181 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 55,343 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Dungu where it started

65,067 ha reached on 9 Jan

1.9 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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	34.5 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Jan	36.0 °C	17 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Jan	35.5 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Jan	34.4 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Jan	33.0 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Jan	35.4 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
15 Jan	35.9 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
16 Jan	35.9 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Jan	37.2 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Jan	36.1 °C	17 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Jan after	35.0 °C	25 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Jan after	34.6 °C	31 %	29 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
21 Jan after	32.5 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Jan after	34.4 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 37
23 Jan after	32.8 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Jan after	33.7 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Jan after	34.1 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Jan after	33.8 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Jan after	34.5 °C	13 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Jan after	34.1 °C	15 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Jan 2025

After · 25 Jan 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 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 89 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak89 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM1092 µg/m³

Optical depth1.05

WHO 15

789101112131415161718192021

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 · 2,453Every 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 Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dungu fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2025 and 18 January 2025: 10 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 64,646 hectares (646.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Dungu (65,067 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 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 Congo - Kinshasa (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 ↗

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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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