How long did the Idiofa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2020 and 3 August 2020: 12 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 5,435 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Idiofa (5,467 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 2020-07-23 → 2020-08-03

Idiofa fire, 23 July 2020 Idiofa

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2020, 12:43 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2020 in Idiofa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,435 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 211th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 142 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Idiofa · 2018 Idiofa · 2016 Idiofa · 2026 Idiofa · 2024

Burnt area: 5,435ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 23 Jul 2020 – 3 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 23 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 277; in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 223MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 4 Aug 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul3 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 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

29km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,418 ha in 2016, 4,258 ha in 2017, 3,253 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,010 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

5,467 ha reached on 18 Jul

0.3 %

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)
23 Jul	32.5 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
24 Jul	32.2 °C	39 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
25 Jul	32.2 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
26 Jul	31.8 °C	46 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Jul	30.7 °C	48 %	24 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
28 Jul	32.2 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Jul	33.1 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Jul	33.5 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Jul	33.5 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Aug	32.5 °C	38 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Aug	32.7 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
3 Aug	33.2 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Aug after	31.8 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
5 Aug after	32.1 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
6 Aug after	32.6 °C	42 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Aug after	32.7 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Aug after	32.4 °C	42 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Aug after	34.1 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Aug after	32.5 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Aug after	33.0 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Aug after	32.8 °C	44 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Aug after	33.2 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jul 2020

After · 10 Aug 2020

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 · 277Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2020 and 3 August 2020: 12 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 5,435 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Idiofa (5,467 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 277 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