Burned area
satellite only1,170ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2017 – 3 Aug 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CG · Republic of the Congo · –
Kindamba fire, 31 July 2017 Kindamba
Out · last detection 3 Aug 2017, 12:12 UTC
The fire started on 31 July 2017 in Kindamba, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,170 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 133th largest in Pool since 2016 (of 202 with a page). Number 50 in Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 71.
The power measured by the satellite is low (25.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mayama · 2023Mayama · 2018Mayama · 2022Mayama · 2025
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only4days
31 Jul 2017 to 3 Aug 2017: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 3 Aug 2017, 12:12 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only31 Jul 2017
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Jul 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only28
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 25 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2017 – 3 Aug 2017
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only162MW
Total radiative power on 2 August 2017; hotspots that day: 14.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Aug 2017
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model9.9FWI · low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 35.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2017, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model28.9°C · 59% RH
High of 28.9 °C and minimum humidity of 59% on 3 August 2017; gusts of 30 km/h on 31 July 2017.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Jul 2017 – 3 Aug 2017
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logName: Bambama → Kindamba.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 5 November 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,170 ha
- Dates
- 31 Jul 2017 – 3 Aug 2017
- Name
- Kindamba
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kindamba-2017-07-2?v=2026-11-05A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire kindamba-2017-07-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-07-31 | 2 | 3 | 24.2 | 19 | 66 | 13.1 | 30.2 | 0 | 9.9 | bajo | 1 |
| 2017-08-01 | 0 | 0 | 25.1 | 18.4 | 61 | 10.5 | 26.6 | 0 | 10.2 | bajo | 1 |
| 2017-08-02 | 14 | 162 | 26.8 | 18.2 | 60 | 13.6 | 29.9 | 0 | 12.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2017-08-03 | 12 | 91 | 28.9 | 18.4 | 59 | 9.2 | 23 | 0 | 11.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2017-08-04 | 0 | 0 | 25.8 | 19.8 | 66 | 11.4 | 27.4 | 0.8 | 8.5 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-05 | 0 | 0 | 24.8 | 20 | 67 | 11.6 | 29.2 | 0 | 9.5 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-06 | 0 | 0 | 27.2 | 19 | 63 | 9 | 22.3 | 0.2 | 10.1 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-07 | 0 | 0 | 27.9 | 20 | 64 | 7.4 | 22 | 0.8 | 7.7 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-08 | 0 | 0 | 26.3 | 20.1 | 67 | 10.4 | 24.8 | 0.4 | 9.6 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-09 | 0 | 0 | 23.8 | 20.2 | 69 | 12.4 | 30.6 | 0.6 | 9.2 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-10 | 0 | 0 | 25.1 | 18.9 | 65 | 14.1 | 32 | 0 | 11.2 | bajo | 0 |
| 2017-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 18.3 | 63 | 11.7 | 25.2 | 0.1 | 11.5 | moderado | 0 |
| 2017-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 26.7 | 18.2 | 61 | 13.2 | 28.8 | 0 | 12.9 | moderado | 0 |
| 2017-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 26.5 | 18.3 | 58 | 12.1 | 25.2 | 0 | 13.4 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,170ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 31 Jul 2017 – 3 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Jul
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 28
- in a single hotspot: 25 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 85MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Jul3 Aug
3 Aug 2017
How it evolved, day by day
31 Jul
2 Aug
3 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
29°high
30km/h · peak gust
59%lowest humidity
It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Kindamba where it started1,178 ha reached on 31 Jul0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jul | 24.2 °C | 66 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 1 Aug | 25.1 °C | 61 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 2 Aug | 26.8 °C | 60 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 3 Aug | 28.9 °C | 59 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 4 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 66 % | 27 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 8 |
| 5 Aug after | 24.8 °C | 67 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 6 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 63 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 10 |
| 7 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 64 % | 22 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 8 |
| 8 Aug after | 26.3 °C | 67 % | 25 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 9 Aug after | 23.8 °C | 69 % | 31 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 9 |
| 10 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 65 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 11 Aug after | 26.0 °C | 63 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 12 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 61 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 13 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 58 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 9.9, a minimum humidity of 66% and 35 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 15.
FWI at the start
9.9
Minimum humidity
66 %
Days without rain
35
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Kindamba fire, 31 July 2017
1,170 ha
4 days
FWI 9.9
Min. humidity 66 %
Mayama fire, July 2023
1,050 ha
1 day
FWI 12.6
Min. humidity 65 %
72 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Mayama fire, July 2018
1,351 ha
6 days
FWI 13.5
Min. humidity 65 %
45 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Mayama fire, July 2023
1,043 ha
4 days
FWI 7.7
Min. humidity 67 %
65 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Plateaux fire, July 2018
2,471 ha
3 days
FWI 8.7
Min. humidity 66 %
148 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Djambala fire, August 2021
1,385 ha
2 days
FWI 9.8
Min. humidity 64 %
136 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.9 mm on 5 Aug.
What happened to them
- 3 days
- median duration
- 1,351 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.7 mm
- rain at the end (median; 5 of 15 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (1,170 ha against a median of 1,351 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 3 days.
In 10 of 15, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.7 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
30km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 3 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 5 of 15, with a median of 1.7 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Jul 2017
After · 10 Aug 2017
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 28Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kindamba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 July 2017 and 3 August 2017: 4 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 1,170 hectares (11.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kindamba (1,178 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 59 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
- 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 ADM2). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 15. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 1,351 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 10 of 15, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.7 mm.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Bambama → Kindamba.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 28 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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (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.