Burned area
satellite only6,077ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · –
Lubao fire, July 2024 Lubao
Out · last detection 10 Aug 2024, 23:41 UTC
The fire started on 31 July 2024 in Lubao, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,077 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 25th largest in Lomami since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 82 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2024, of 133.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lubao · 2018Kongolo · 2023Kabongo · 2018Lubao · 2026
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only11days
31 Jul 2024 to 10 Aug 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 10 Aug 2024, 23:41 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only31 Jul 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Jul 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only296
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 165 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,985MW
Total radiative power on 3 August 2024; hotspots that day: 60.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 3 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model24.6FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 0.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model35.5°C · 18% RH
High of 35.5 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 7 August 2024; gusts of 43 km/h on 3 August 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Jul 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 4 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
-
logStart date: 1 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 10 August 2024 → 4 August 2024.
-
logStart date: 31 July 2024 → 1 August 2024.
-
logLast day with fire: 4 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
-
logStart date: 1 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/lubao-2024-07?v=2026-11-05A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire lubao-2024-07.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-07-31 | 0 | 0 | 34.9 | 20 | 22 | 11.1 | 23.4 | 0 | 24.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-01 | 7 | 40 | 33.9 | 20.2 | 22 | 12.8 | 27.4 | 0 | 39.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-02 | 37 | 552 | 33 | 20.2 | 22 | 14.9 | 39.2 | 0 | 48.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-03 | 60 | 1,985 | 34.1 | 20.6 | 20 | 16.5 | 42.8 | 0 | 55.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2024-08-04 | 139 | 1,930 | 34.9 | 21 | 20 | 11.7 | 33.1 | 0 | 45.5 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-05 | 5 | 76 | 34.2 | 17.5 | 22 | 9.9 | 26.3 | 0 | 41.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-06 | 1 | 7 | 33.7 | 19.8 | 25 | 6.8 | 23.8 | 0 | 36.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-07 | 42 | 483 | 35.5 | 18.2 | 18 | 12.2 | 31.3 | 0 | 49.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-08 | 2 | 27 | 35.5 | 20.2 | 18 | 10.8 | 31.3 | 0 | 47.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-09 | 0 | 0 | 34.8 | 19.7 | 21 | 8.4 | 25.9 | 0 | 45.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-10 | 3 | 40 | 34.1 | 20 | 24 | 9.7 | 28.4 | 0 | 47.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 20.4 | 21 | 7.4 | 24.8 | 0 | 43.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 22 | 33 | 9 | 26.6 | 0 | 32.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 33.5 | 22 | 29 | 8.9 | 20.9 | 0 | 36.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-14 | 0 | 0 | 32.7 | 22.2 | 33 | 10.7 | 25.2 | 0 | 32.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-15 | 0 | 0 | 29.6 | 22.4 | 51 | 9.6 | 23 | 5.4 | 26.4 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,077ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 31 Jul 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 31 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 296
- in a single hotspot: 165 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 571MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Jul10 Aug
10 Aug 2024
How it evolved, day by day
1 Aug
3 Aug
5 Aug
7 Aug
10 Aug
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
43km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 15 Aug.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 171 ha in 2016, 2,449 ha in 2017, 1,270 ha in 2018, 1,193 ha in 2019, 2,003 ha in 2020, 2,392 ha in 2021, 1,810 ha in 2022, 2,724 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,133 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Lubao where it started6,124 ha reached on 1 Aug0.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jul | 34.9 °C | 22 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Aug | 33.9 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Aug | 33.0 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Aug | 34.1 °C | 20 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Aug | 34.9 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 5 Aug | 34.2 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Aug | 33.7 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Aug | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 8 Aug | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 9 Aug | 34.8 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Aug | 34.1 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 11 Aug after | 35.0 °C | 21 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 12 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 29 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Aug after | 32.7 °C | 33 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Aug after | 29.6 °C | 51 % | 23 km/h | 5.4 mm | High 26 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 24.6, a minimum humidity of 22% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.
FWI at the start
24.6
Minimum humidity
22 %
Days without rain
0
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Lubao fire, July 2024
6,077 ha
11 days
FWI 24.6
Min. humidity 22 %
Lubao fire, July 2018
6,322 ha
10 days
FWI 28.9
Min. humidity 26 %
131 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Kongolo fire, July 2023
5,740 ha
18 days
FWI 35.1
Min. humidity 23 %
168 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Manono fire, May 2017
7,183 ha
10 days
FWI 31.6
Min. humidity 27 %
127 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Lubao fire, June 2018
5,338 ha
9 days
FWI 38.8
Min. humidity 25 %
126 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Kabalo fire, May 2017
6,183 ha
15 days
FWI 39.0
Min. humidity 24 %
101 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
5.4 mmfirst rain
15 Aug5 days after it ended
43km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 10 Aug, and on 15 Aug 5.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Jul 2024
After · 17 Aug 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 5 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 80: 5.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10164 µg/m³
Optical depth2.03
WHO 15
30 Jul1 Aug3 Aug5 Aug7 Aug
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 · 296Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lubao fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2024 to 10 August 2024 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 August 2024 to 4 August 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,077 hectares (60.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lubao (6,124 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 4 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
- Start date: 1 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
- Last day with fire: 10 August 2024 → 4 August 2024.
- Start date: 31 July 2024 → 1 August 2024.
- Last day with fire: 4 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
- Start date: 1 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 1 August 2024 to 4 August 2024. 296 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.
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.