How long did the Faradje fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 January 2017 and 18 January 2017: 8 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 22,039 hectares (220.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Faradje (20,457 ha, 1.6 %); Dungu (1,747 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2017-01-11 → 2017-01-18

Faradje fire, January 2017 Faradje, Dungu

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2017, 11:49 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2017 in Faradje, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 19th largest in Upper Uele since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 4 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Faradje · 2019 Dungu · 2026 Faradje · 2026 Dungu · 2024

Burnt area: 22,039ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 11 Jan 2017 – 18 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 11 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 796; in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan18 Jan

Play back 19 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jan 13 Jan 15 Jan 17 Jan 19 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

41km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 26 Jan.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,902 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,220 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (220 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

Faradje where it started

20,457 ha reached on 7 Jan

1.6 %
Dungu

1,747 ha reached on 12 Jan

0.0 %

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)
7 Jan	36.0 °C	10 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Jan	35.8 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Jan	34.9 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
10 Jan	35.1 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Jan	35.7 °C	12 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Jan	35.8 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Jan	36.1 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
14 Jan	36.0 °C	12 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
15 Jan	37.4 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Jan	38.1 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Jan	38.0 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Jan	37.0 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
19 Jan after	37.2 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Jan after	37.9 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
21 Jan after	36.8 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Jan after	38.3 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Jan after	38.2 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
24 Jan after	34.3 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Jan after	34.7 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 39
26 Jan after	34.1 °C	31 %	38 km/h	2.9 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Jan 2017

After · 25 Jan 2017

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.

Detections table · 796Every 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 Faradje fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 January 2017 and 18 January 2017: 8 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 22,039 hectares (220.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Faradje (20,457 ha, 1.6 %); Dungu (1,747 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 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

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 796 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.

Where it burned