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

Idiofa fire, July 2019 Idiofa

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2019, 11:28 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2019 in Idiofa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,090 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 105th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 36 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Idiofa · 2016Idiofa · 2018Idiofa · 2026Idiofa · 2020

Burnt area
8,090ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
22 Jul 2019 – 5 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
22 Jul
2019
Heat detections
361
in a single hotspot: 156 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
344MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul5 Aug
6 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2019 · 84 MW · 8 23 Jul 2019 · 49 MW · 5 24 Jul 2019 · 105 MW · 7 25 Jul 2019 · 118 MW · 12 26 Jul 2019 · 74 MW · 8 28 Jul 2019 · 261 MW · 20 29 Jul 2019 · 572 MW · 32 30 Jul 2019 · 1,347 MW · 56 31 Jul 2019 · 839 MW · 41 1 Aug 2019 · 269 MW · 25 2 Aug 2019 · 427 MW · 33 3 Aug 2019 · 49 MW · 11 4 Aug 2019 · 75 MW · 8 5 Aug 2019 · 774 MW · 40 6 Aug 2019 · 115 MW · 9
22 Jul 25 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 4 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

34°high
32km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 6 Aug.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,050 ha in 2016, 4,464 ha in 2017, 4,156 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,929 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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. Idiofa where it started
    8,144 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.4 %

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)
22 Jul 32.3 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Jul 33.7 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul 32.1 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Jul 34.0 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Jul 34.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jul 33.6 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul 32.5 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul 33.7 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jul 33.5 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 33.0 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Aug 33.0 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Aug 32.0 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug 27.9 °C 63 % 28 km/h 1.6 mm Low 9
4 Aug 31.7 °C 46 % 22 km/h 1.6 mm Low 10
5 Aug 33.8 °C 41 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Aug after 34.3 °C 40 % 30 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2019
After · 12 Aug 2019

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 · 361Every 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 Idiofa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 July 2019 and 5 August 2019: 15 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 8,090 hectares (80.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Idiofa (8,144 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 361 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.