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Lubao fire, 30 June 2018 Lubao

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2018, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2018 in Lubao, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,846 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Lomami since 2016 (of 66 with a page). Number 27 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lubao · 2017Lubao · 2016Lubao · 2026Lubao · 2018

Burnt area
8,846ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
30 Jun 2018 – 18 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
30 Jun
2018
Heat detections
335
in a single hotspot: 320 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
867MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun18 Jul
18 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2018 · 17 MW · 2 2 Jul 2018 · 151 MW · 10 3 Jul 2018 · 4 MW · 1 5 Jul 2018 · 37 MW · 2 6 Jul 2018 · 246 MW · 31 7 Jul 2018 · 106 MW · 10 8 Jul 2018 · 785 MW · 18 9 Jul 2018 · 6,894 MW · 102 10 Jul 2018 · 936 MW · 46 11 Jul 2018 · 2,292 MW · 74 12 Jul 2018 · 11 MW · 3 13 Jul 2018 · 52 MW · 4 16 Jul 2018 · 431 MW · 18 18 Jul 2018 · 174 MW · 14
30 Jun 3 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 9 Jul 10 Jul 12 Jul 16 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

36°high
51km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,096 ha in 2016, 5,163 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,788 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (88 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. Lubao where it started
    8,901 ha reached on 30 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 2020
Built-up area1.6 ha
Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 400 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)
6 Jul 33.0 °C 23 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Jul 33.6 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Jul 33.9 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jul 34.9 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jul 35.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Jul 35.5 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Jul 35.5 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul 35.1 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jul 35.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul 36.1 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Jul 34.3 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Jul 33.2 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jul 33.1 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Jul after 33.2 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jul after 34.6 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Jul after 35.4 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jul after 34.9 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2018
After · 25 Jul 2018

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 · 335Every 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 Lubao fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 June 2018 to 18 July 2018 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 July 2018 to 12 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,846 hectares (88.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lubao (8,901 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 July 2018 to 12 July 2018. 335 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.