Idiofa fire, 26 July 2020 Idiofa
The fire started on 26 July 2020 in Idiofa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,291 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 27th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 19 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 18,291ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 27days
- 26 Jul 2020 – 21 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 26 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 864
- in a single hotspot: 116 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 445MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.5 mm on 22 Aug.
This area had burned before
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,019 ha in 2016, 4,798 ha in 2017, 3,534 ha in 2018, 8,716 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,829 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started18,403 ha reached on 26 Jul1.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul | 31.4 °C | 45 % | 24 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 27 Jul | 30.5 °C | 46 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Jul | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 29 Jul | 33.1 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Jul | 33.4 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Jul | 33.9 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Aug | 32.7 °C | 39 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Aug | 32.5 °C | 42 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 3 Aug | 32.5 °C | 47 % | 23 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 4 Aug | 31.4 °C | 48 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 5 Aug | 31.8 °C | 44 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 22 |
| 6 Aug | 32.2 °C | 44 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 7 Aug | 32.4 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Aug | 32.0 °C | 45 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Aug | 33.4 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 10 Aug | 32.3 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 11 Aug | 32.5 °C | 43 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 12 Aug | 32.6 °C | 46 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Aug | 32.9 °C | 45 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Aug | 30.9 °C | 53 % | 25 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Aug | 30.0 °C | 59 % | 30 km/h | 5.8 mm | Very low 4 |
| 16 Aug | 33.7 °C | 43 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 17 Aug | 34.1 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 18 Aug | 33.1 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 19 Aug | 33.0 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 20 Aug | 32.9 °C | 48 % | 24 km/h | 7.6 mm | Very low 3 |
| 21 Aug | 34.1 °C | 42 % | 23 km/h | 3.8 mm | Very low 4 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 57 % | 30 km/h | 7.5 mm | Very low 1 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 864Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 18,892 haIdiofa9 August 2026 · 20 days · 5 km away
- 20,147 haIdiofa18 July 2020 · 32 days · 22 km away
- 27,007 haBulungu3 August 2026 · 26 days · 25 km away
- 20,145 haIdiofa13 August 2026 · 34 days · 36 km away
- 18,973 haIdiofa6 August 2025 · 36 days · 36 km away
- 26,939 haIdiofa5 August 2026 · 24 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Idiofa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2020 to 21 August 2020 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2020 to 16 August 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,291 hectares (182.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Idiofa (18,403 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 16 August 2020 → 21 August 2020.
- Start date: 2 August 2020 → 26 July 2020.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 August 2020 to 16 August 2020. 864 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.
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.