Lodja fire, 5 July 2023 Lodja
The fire started on 5 July 2023 in Lodja, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,127 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 183th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 72 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023, of 76.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lodja · 2019Lodja · 2021Lodja · 2018Lodja · 2016
- Burnt area
- 5,127ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 5 Jul 2023 – 21 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 5 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 157
- in a single hotspot: 65 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 144MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,445 ha in 2016, 1,429 ha in 2018, 2,779 ha in 2019, 802 ha in 2020, 3,868 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,743 ha that had burned before.
- 2,779 ha Lodja fire, July 2019 8,614 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,462 ha Lodja fire, July 2021 6,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,343 ha Lodja fire, June 2018 27,599 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 304 ha Lodja fire, June 2016 30,512 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 263 ha Lodja fire, June 2016 9,585 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 106 ha Lodja fire, July 2020 8,790 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 86 ha Lodja fire, July 2018 6,560 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 started5,165 ha reached on 8 Jul0.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.64 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jul | 33.8 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 12 Jul | 33.4 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 13 Jul | 33.6 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 14 Jul | 34.9 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jul | 35.2 °C | 24 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Jul | 35.4 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Jul | 36.1 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 18 Jul | 36.3 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 19 Jul | 34.6 °C | 21 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 20 Jul | 34.3 °C | 31 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 21 Jul | 34.1 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Jul after | 35.8 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 23 Jul after | 35.6 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 24 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 25 Jul after | 34.3 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 26 Jul after | 33.9 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 33 |
| 27 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Jul after | 34.2 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 30 Jul after | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 31 Jul after | 34.7 °C | 35 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 9 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 371 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 181: 12 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 157Every 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?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 July 2023 to 21 July 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 July 2023 to 21 July 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,127 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lodja (5,165 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.
- Start date: 11 July 2023 → 5 July 2023.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 July 2023 to 21 July 2023. 157 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 2025, 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.