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Idiofa fire, 24 July 2020 Idiofa

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2020, 11:53 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2020 in Idiofa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,147 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 236 with a page). Number 17 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Idiofa · 2016Idiofa · 2018Idiofa · 2017Idiofa · 2020

Burnt area
20,147ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
24 Jul 2020 – 11 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
24 Jul
2020
Heat detections
1,100
in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
748MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul11 Aug
12 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jul 2020 · 124 MW · 11 25 Jul 2020 · 287 MW · 35 26 Jul 2020 · 87 MW · 7 27 Jul 2020 · 1,019 MW · 63 28 Jul 2020 · 483 MW · 54 29 Jul 2020 · 1,483 MW · 96 30 Jul 2020 · 836 MW · 63 31 Jul 2020 · 647 MW · 52 1 Aug 2020 · 2,560 MW · 135 2 Aug 2020 · 1,716 MW · 63 3 Aug 2020 · 885 MW · 74 4 Aug 2020 · 85 MW · 11 5 Aug 2020 · 1,022 MW · 65 6 Aug 2020 · 261 MW · 22 7 Aug 2020 · 581 MW · 43 8 Aug 2020 · 889 MW · 55 9 Aug 2020 · 3 MW · 1 10 Aug 2020 · 867 MW · 60 11 Aug 2020 · 556 MW · 36 12 Aug 2020 · 567 MW · 28
24 Jul 27 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 5 Aug 8 Aug 11 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
33km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 19 Aug.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14,379 ha in 2016, 11,375 ha in 2017, 12,555 ha in 2018, 4,473 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,453 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (201 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
    20,275 ha reached on 18 Jul
    1.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area17 ha
Residents≈ 1,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 17 hectares of built-up land and about 1,700 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
18 Jul 30.6 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
19 Jul 31.1 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul 32.4 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Jul 33.5 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jul 33.4 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jul 32.2 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jul 31.8 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Jul 31.9 °C 43 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jul 31.3 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
27 Jul 30.4 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Jul 32.2 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Jul 33.0 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Jul 33.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Jul 33.8 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug 32.6 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug 32.4 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Aug 32.4 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
4 Aug 31.3 °C 48 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
5 Aug 31.7 °C 44 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
6 Aug 32.1 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Aug 32.3 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Aug 31.9 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Aug 33.3 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug 32.2 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Aug 32.4 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Aug after 32.5 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
13 Aug after 32.8 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Aug after 30.8 °C 53 % 25 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
15 Aug after 29.9 °C 59 % 30 km/h 5.8 mm Very low 4
16 Aug after 33.6 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
17 Aug after 34.0 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Aug after 33.0 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Aug after 32.9 °C 48 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2020
After · 18 Aug 2020

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 · 1,100Every 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 24 July 2020 and 11 August 2020: 19 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 20,147 hectares (201.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Idiofa (20,275 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 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

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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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. 1,100 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 2020, 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.