Lodja fire, 21 June 2022 Lodja
The fire started on 21 June 2022 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 116,070 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 4th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). The largest in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lodja · 2018Lodja · 2020Lodja · 2016Lodja · 2020
- Burnt area
- 116,070ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 28days
- 21 Jun 2022 – 18 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 21 Jun
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 9,578
- in a single hotspot: 328 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 4.5GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 19 Jul.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 80,839 ha in 2016, 48,753 ha in 2017, 89,727 ha in 2018, 83,202 ha in 2019, 90,689 ha in 2020, 40,906 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 112,072 ha that had burned before.
- 43,877 ha Lodja fire, July 2018 85,816 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 22,239 ha Lodja fire, June 2020 42,241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 19,818 ha Lodja fire, June 2016 41,432 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 18,824 ha Lodja fire, June 2020 42,778 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 16,660 ha Lodja fire, June 2016 22,381 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,252 ha Lodja fire, June 2019 30,911 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,567 ha Lodja fire, June 2019 9,660 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,456 ha Lodja fire, June 2017 9,170 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Lodja where it started116,849 ha reached on 20 Jun9.3 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 84 hectares of built-up land and about 2,100 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jun | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 22 Jun | 30.8 °C | 41 % | 22 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Jun | 31.1 °C | 40 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 24 Jun | 32.4 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 25 Jun | 31.7 °C | 35 % | 19 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 26 Jun | 32.7 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 27 Jun | 34.2 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Jun | 32.9 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Jun | 33.0 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 30 Jun | 33.8 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Jul | 34.1 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Jul | 32.9 °C | 27 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Jul | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Jul | 35.0 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Jul | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Jul | 33.4 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Jul | 35.0 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Jul | 35.4 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Jul | 35.4 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Jul | 34.7 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Jul | 33.4 °C | 26 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Jul | 34.6 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Jul | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Jul | 34.3 °C | 28 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 15 Jul | 34.6 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Jul | 33.7 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Jul | 33.1 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Jul | 30.8 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Jul after | 28.0 °C | 56 % | 27 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 13 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 9,578Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lodja fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 June 2022 and 18 July 2022: 28 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 116,070 hectares (1,160.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lodja (116,849 ha, 9.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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; 8 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 9,578 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.
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.