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Lodja fire, 8 July 2021 Lodja, Kole

Out · last detection 28 Jul 2021, 12:31 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2021 in Lodja, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,081 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 67th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 13 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021, of 97.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lodja · 2016Lodja · 2019Lodja · 2018Lodja · 2023

Burnt area
10,081ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
8 Jul 2021 – 28 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
8 Jul
2021
Heat detections
702
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
433MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul28 Jul
28 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2021 · 276 MW · 19 9 Jul 2021 · 724 MW · 59 10 Jul 2021 · 544 MW · 44 11 Jul 2021 · 63 MW · 9 12 Jul 2021 · 399 MW · 48 13 Jul 2021 · 864 MW · 56 14 Jul 2021 · 1,116 MW · 68 15 Jul 2021 · 802 MW · 75 16 Jul 2021 · 438 MW · 47 17 Jul 2021 · 84 MW · 6 18 Jul 2021 · 74 MW · 8 19 Jul 2021 · 1,404 MW · 106 20 Jul 2021 · 55 MW · 8 21 Jul 2021 · 261 MW · 24 22 Jul 2021 · 42 MW · 11 23 Jul 2021 · 6 MW · 1 25 Jul 2021 · 37 MW · 4 26 Jul 2021 · 1,412 MW · 93 27 Jul 2021 · 39 MW · 13 28 Jul 2021 · 12 MW · 3
8 Jul 11 Jul 14 Jul 17 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 27 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

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 6 Aug.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,005 ha in 2016, 1,023 ha in 2017, 9,274 ha in 2018, 6,696 ha in 2019, 5,938 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,709 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (101 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
    9,283 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.7 %
  2. Kole
    871 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.0 %

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 area2.7 ha
Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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)
8 Jul 32.7 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Jul 33.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Jul 33.8 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul 33.1 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Jul 33.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul 34.3 °C 17 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul 33.8 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Jul 33.6 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul 34.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 34.0 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul 32.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul 34.1 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul 32.3 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 33.6 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul 36.0 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul 31.9 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul 31.1 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul 33.9 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jul 32.4 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul 32.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul 33.8 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul after 33.0 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Jul after 34.2 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Jul after 35.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Aug after 34.4 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 32.0 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug after 33.1 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Aug after 34.3 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug after 33.7 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 33.1 °C 43 % 29 km/h 3.9 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2021
After · 4 Aug 2021

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 · 702Every 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 8 July 2021 to 28 July 2021 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 July 2021 to 21 July 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,081 hectares (100.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lodja (9,283 ha, 0.7 %); Kole (871 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 July 2021 → 28 July 2021.

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 8 July 2021 to 21 July 2021. 702 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.