How long did the Idiofa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2018 to 17 August 2018 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 August 2018 to 10 August 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,760 hectares (77.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Idiofa (7,815 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2018-07-29 → 2018-08-17

Idiofa fire, 29 July 2018 Idiofa

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2018, 12:06 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2018 in Idiofa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,760 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 115th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 31 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Idiofa · 2016 Idiofa · 2020 Idiofa · 2026 Idiofa · 2024

Burnt area: 7,760ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 29 Jul 2018 – 17 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 29 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 334; in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 284MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul17 Aug

Play back 17 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 4 Aug 6 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 15 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

36°high

39km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 14 Aug.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,451 ha in 2016, 6,426 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,741 ha that had burned before.

4,325 ha Idiofa fire, July 2016 6,066 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 (78 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

Idiofa where it started

7,815 ha reached on 29 Jul

0.4 %

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.

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)
4 Aug	33.5 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Aug	35.6 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 Aug	32.9 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
7 Aug	32.1 °C	40 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Aug	33.3 °C	41 %	28 km/h	3.1 mm	Moderate 13
9 Aug	32.8 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
10 Aug	32.8 °C	46 %	31 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 10
11 Aug	33.2 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
12 Aug	32.7 °C	42 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 23
13 Aug	32.1 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
14 Aug	32.9 °C	43 %	25 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jul 2018

After · 24 Aug 2018

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 · 334Every 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 Idiofa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2018 to 17 August 2018 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 August 2018 to 10 August 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,760 hectares (77.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Idiofa (7,815 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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: 10 August 2018 → 17 August 2018.
26 October 2026 Start date: 4 August 2018 → 29 July 2018.

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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What do you think is wrong?

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 4 August 2018 to 10 August 2018. 334 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.

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