How long did the Impfondo fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2025 and 5 September 2025: 5 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 1,080 hectares (10.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Impfondo (1,088 ha, 0.2 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CG · Republic of the Congo · 2025-09-01 → 2025-09-05

Impfondo fire, 1 September 2025 Impfondo

Out · last detection 5 Sept 2025, 12:09 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2025 in Impfondo, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,080 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 154th largest in Bouenza since 2016 (of 180 with a page). Number 71 in Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 88.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 1,080ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 1 Sept 2025 – 5 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 15; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Average daily power: 42MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 5 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept5 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2022.

4 ha Impfondo fire, August 2022 1,702 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Impfondo where it started

1,088 ha reached on 1 Sept

0.2 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2025

After · 12 Sept 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM1085 µg/m³

Optical depth2.24

WHO 15

303112345678

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 15Every 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 Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Impfondo fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2025 and 5 September 2025: 5 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 1,080 hectares (10.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Impfondo (1,088 ha, 0.2 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of 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.

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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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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 (Public Domain). 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