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Lodja fire, 29 June 2018 Lodja

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2018, 12:18 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2018 in Lodja, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,198 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 152th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 73 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lodja · 2016Lodja · 2023Lodja · 2026Lodja · 2024

Burnt area
6,198ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
29 Jun 2018 – 26 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 Jun
2018
Heat detections
349
in a single hotspot: 96 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
179MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun26 Jul
26 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jun 2018 · 17 MW · 4 30 Jun 2018 · 15 MW · 1 1 Jul 2018 · 101 MW · 9 2 Jul 2018 · 387 MW · 25 5 Jul 2018 · 123 MW · 17 6 Jul 2018 · 725 MW · 80 7 Jul 2018 · 941 MW · 56 8 Jul 2018 · 105 MW · 12 9 Jul 2018 · 39 MW · 8 10 Jul 2018 · 457 MW · 17 11 Jul 2018 · 407 MW · 29 12 Jul 2018 · 351 MW · 22 13 Jul 2018 · 58 MW · 4 14 Jul 2018 · 45 MW · 5 15 Jul 2018 · 21 MW · 3 16 Jul 2018 · 250 MW · 22 17 Jul 2018 · 92 MW · 9 18 Jul 2018 · 17 MW · 3 19 Jul 2018 · 37 MW · 8 21 Jul 2018 · 26 MW · 3 23 Jul 2018 · 20 MW · 3 24 Jul 2018 · 50 MW · 4 25 Jul 2018 · 7 MW · 2 26 Jul 2018 · 8 MW · 3
29 Jun 5 Jul 7 Jul 9 Jul 13 Jul 17 Jul 23 Jul

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
39km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 27 Jul.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,449 ha in 2016, 1,061 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,451 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Lodja where it started
    6,242 ha reached on 29 Jun
    0.5 %

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)
5 Jul 31.8 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Jul 32.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Jul 33.0 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Jul 33.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Jul 34.3 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Jul 34.4 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jul 33.4 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jul 33.2 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Jul 33.1 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul 33.1 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul 32.6 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul 32.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jul 32.7 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul 32.7 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jul 32.2 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 33.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 34.7 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul 34.6 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jul 35.5 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jul 34.5 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jul 34.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul 30.1 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jul after 31.2 °C 43 % 24 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jun 2018
After · 2 Aug 2018

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 · 349Every 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 Lodja fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 June 2018 to 26 July 2018 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 July 2018 to 19 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,198 hectares (62.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lodja (6,242 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 July 2018 → 26 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 5 July 2018 → 29 June 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 July 2018 to 19 July 2018. 349 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.