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Lubao fire, 17 July 2018 Lubao

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2018, 22:56 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2018 in Lubao, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,414 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Lomami since 2016 (of 66 with a page). Number 21 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lubao · 2016Lubao · 2016Lubao · 2020Lubao · 2018

Burnt area
10,414ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
17 Jul 2018 – 22 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
17 Jul
2018
Heat detections
330
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
872MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul22 Jul
22 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2018 · 174 MW · 17 18 Jul 2018 · 236 MW · 17 19 Jul 2018 · 200 MW · 48 20 Jul 2018 · 1,011 MW · 71 21 Jul 2018 · 1,996 MW · 113 22 Jul 2018 · 1,617 MW · 64
17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 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
48km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,162 ha in 2016, 1,258 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,275 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (104 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
    10,475 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.5 %

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 area1.7 ha
Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.7 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)
17 Jul 33.7 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jul 33.6 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Jul 33.6 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jul 35.0 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Jul 35.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jul 35.3 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jul after 35.2 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jul after 34.4 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Jul after 34.8 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Jul after 33.4 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Jul after 32.0 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Jul after 34.5 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Jul after 33.3 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul after 32.4 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul after 34.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug after 31.2 °C 45 % 21 km/h 0.8 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2018
After · 29 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 · 330Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 July 2018 and 22 July 2018: 6 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 10,414 hectares (104.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lubao (10,475 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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. 330 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.