Lodja fire, 22 July 2025 Lodja
The fire started on 22 July 2025 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 7,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 116th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 60 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 118.
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Suggestions: Lodja · 2023Lodja · 2022Lodja · 2020Lodja · 2016
- Burnt area
- 7,084ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 22 Jul 2025 – 7 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 22 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 291
- in a single hotspot: 49 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 158MW
- 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: 1.1 mm on 6 Aug.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,347 ha in 2016, 2,960 ha in 2017, 5,473 ha in 2018, 5,170 ha in 2019, 5,591 ha in 2020, 3,291 ha in 2021, 6,642 ha in 2022, 6,412 ha in 2023, 4,679 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,886 ha that had burned before.
- 6,412 ha Lodja fire, July 2023 121,496 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,077 ha Lodja fire, June 2022 116,070 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,647 ha Lodja fire, July 2020 6,966 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,612 ha Lodja fire, June 2016 22,381 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,828 ha Lodja fire, June 2018 85,816 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,897 ha Lodja fire, June 2024 36,626 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 807 ha Lodja fire, June 2020 42,241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 142 ha Lodja fire, June 2017 6,480 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 started7,132 ha reached on 23 Jul0.6 %
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 3.3 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul | 32.4 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 Jul | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 31 Jul | 34.6 °C | 24 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Aug | 32.6 °C | 29 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Aug | 32.4 °C | 37 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Aug | 33.2 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Aug | 33.6 °C | 28 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 5 Aug | 32.6 °C | 35 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Aug | 33.3 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
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 27 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 63: 4.2 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 · 291Every 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 22 July 2025 to 7 August 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 July 2025 to 5 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,084 hectares (70.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lodja (7,132 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 5 August 2025 → 7 August 2025.
- Start date: 29 July 2025 → 22 July 2025.
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 29 July 2025 to 5 August 2025. 291 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.