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Lodja fire, 9 July 2018 Lodja

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2018, 11:09 UTC

The fire started on 9 July 2018 in Lodja, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,560 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 134th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 57 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2018, of 128.

Burnt area
6,560ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
9 Jul 2018 – 19 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
9 Jul
2018
Heat detections
337
in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

910111213141516171819

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
36km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 27 Jul.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,349 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Lodja where it started
    6,608 ha reached on 9 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
9 Jul 34.4 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Jul 34.4 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jul 33.6 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Jul 33.4 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Jul 33.6 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Jul 33.3 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul 32.9 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Jul 32.9 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jul 32.8 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Jul 32.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Jul 32.3 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul after 34.0 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul after 34.6 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul after 34.4 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jul after 35.6 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Jul after 34.5 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Jul after 34.2 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul after 31.1 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul after 31.7 °C 40 % 24 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jul 2018
After · 26 Jul 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 · 337Every 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 Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lodja fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 July 2018 and 19 July 2018: 11 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 6,560 hectares (65.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lodja (6,608 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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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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.