How long did the Lodja fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 June 2026 to 10 July 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 June 2026 to 10 July 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,254 hectares (52.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lodja (5,292 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2026-06-15 → 2026-07-10

Lodja fire, 15 June 2026 Lodja

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 15 June 2026 in Lodja, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,254 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 180th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 483 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lodja · 2026 Lodja · 2024 Katako-Kombe · 2026 Lodja · 2016

Burnt area: 5,254ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 15 Jun 2026 – 10 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 15 Jun; 2026
Heat detections: 121; in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 68MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jun10 Jul

Play back 10 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jun 22 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 3 Jul 6 Jul 10 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

35°high

32km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 15 Jul.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,870 ha in 2016, 2,872 ha in 2017, 3,399 ha in 2018, 255 ha in 2019, 2,442 ha in 2020, 3,825 ha in 2021, 154 ha in 2022, 2,025 ha in 2023, 1,541 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,781 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

Lodja where it started

5,292 ha reached on 16 Jun

0.4 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
22 Jun	33.3 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Jun	32.2 °C	32 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Jun	32.4 °C	31 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Jun	33.9 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Jun	33.6 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Jun	34.1 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Jun	33.5 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Jun	33.4 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Jun	34.6 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Jul	33.9 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Jul	32.6 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Jul	34.4 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Jul	34.6 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
5 Jul	35.0 °C	21 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Jul	35.4 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Jul	33.4 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Jul	34.5 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Jul	33.4 °C	33 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Jul	33.7 °C	33 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Jul after	32.6 °C	39 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Jul after	33.6 °C	33 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Jul after	34.8 °C	31 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Jul after	33.8 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
15 Jul after	30.6 °C	52 %	25 km/h	4.1 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Jun 2026

After · 17 Jul 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 9 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 457 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 236: 16 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak457 µg/m³

Days over the guideline24 days

PM10473 µg/m³

Optical depth2.43

WHO 15

202122232425262728293012345678910111213

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 121Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 15 June 2026 to 10 July 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 June 2026 to 10 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,254 hectares (52.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lodja (5,292 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 22 June 2026 → 15 June 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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 22 June 2026 to 10 July 2026. 121 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.

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.

Where it burned