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Lodja fire, 23 June 2022 Lodja, Katako-Kombe

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2022, 11:22 UTC

The fire started on 23 June 2022 in Lodja, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,580 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 59th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 14 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lodja · 2020Lodja · 2018Lodja · 2025Lodja · 2018

Burnt area
11,580ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
23 Jun 2022 – 7 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
23 Jun
2022
Heat detections
508
in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
337MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jun7 Jul
8 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jun 2022 · 9 MW · 2 24 Jun 2022 · 64 MW · 12 25 Jun 2022 · 29 MW · 5 26 Jun 2022 · 138 MW · 16 27 Jun 2022 · 1,403 MW · 100 28 Jun 2022 · 0 MW · 1 29 Jun 2022 · 107 MW · 27 30 Jun 2022 · 221 MW · 21 1 Jul 2022 · 1,453 MW · 113 2 Jul 2022 · 308 MW · 32 3 Jul 2022 · 50 MW · 5 4 Jul 2022 · 93 MW · 14 5 Jul 2022 · 180 MW · 18 6 Jul 2022 · 169 MW · 16 7 Jul 2022 · 662 MW · 32 8 Jul 2022 · 507 MW · 30
23 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 1 Jul 2 Jul 5 Jul 8 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
37km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 19 Jul.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,935 ha in 2016, 4,280 ha in 2017, 9,855 ha in 2018, 5,792 ha in 2019, 6,509 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,115 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (116 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
    6,712 ha reached on 21 Jun
    0.5 %
  2. Katako-Kombe
    4,942 ha reached on 21 Jun
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area12 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 12 hectares of built-up land and about 300 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 31.2 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
22 Jun 29.7 °C 50 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
23 Jun 29.8 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 16
24 Jun 31.0 °C 41 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
25 Jun 30.4 °C 46 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
26 Jun 31.7 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 14
27 Jun 33.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Jun 32.0 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jun 32.2 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jun 32.5 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Jul 33.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Jul 30.8 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Jul 32.4 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
4 Jul 34.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Jul 33.1 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jul 32.3 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jul 34.2 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jul after 34.4 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul after 34.4 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Jul after 33.3 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Jul after 32.1 °C 36 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jul after 33.8 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jul after 34.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul after 32.6 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul after 33.5 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Jul after 32.7 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Jul after 31.8 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul after 29.8 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
19 Jul after 26.9 °C 63 % 26 km/h 1.2 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jun 2022
After · 14 Jul 2022

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 · 508Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 June 2022 and 7 July 2022: 15 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 11,580 hectares (115.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lodja (6,712 ha, 0.5 %); Katako-Kombe (4,942 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 508 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.