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Lubudi fire, 21 August 2017 Lubudi

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2017, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2017 in Lubudi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,021 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 37 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lubudi · 2026Mutshatsha · 2026Mutshatsha · 2023Mutshatsha · 2026

Burnt area
8,021ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
21 Aug 2017 – 10 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
21 Aug
2017
Heat detections
283
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
184MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 2017 · 17 MW · 2 23 Aug 2017 · 37 MW · 4 25 Aug 2017 · 326 MW · 39 26 Aug 2017 · 108 MW · 17 27 Aug 2017 · 749 MW · 34 28 Aug 2017 · 313 MW · 35 29 Aug 2017 · 320 MW · 33 30 Aug 2017 · 396 MW · 41 31 Aug 2017 · 378 MW · 25 1 Sept 2017 · 166 MW · 8 2 Sept 2017 · 138 MW · 13 3 Sept 2017 · 22 MW · 6 4 Sept 2017 · 40 MW · 9 5 Sept 2017 · 57 MW · 8 6 Sept 2017 · 17 MW · 3 8 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 4 10 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 2
21 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug 29 Aug 1 Sept 4 Sept 8 Sept

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
53km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,583 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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. Lubudi where it started
    8,066 ha reached on 21 Aug
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
23 Aug 32.9 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug 33.6 °C 16 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Aug 34.6 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
26 Aug 33.8 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Aug 32.8 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Aug 32.1 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
29 Aug 31.0 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Aug 32.5 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Aug 33.4 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Sept 33.8 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Sept 33.5 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Sept 32.4 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
4 Sept 31.4 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Sept 32.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Sept 33.9 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 34.3 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 34.2 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 34.1 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 33.8 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept after 33.5 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Sept after 34.2 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Sept after 33.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Sept after 32.2 °C 18 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 2017
After · 17 Sept 2017

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 · 283Every 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 Lubudi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2017 to 10 September 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 August 2017 to 4 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,021 hectares (80.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lubudi (8,066 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 September 2017 → 10 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 23 August 2017 → 21 August 2017.

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 23 August 2017 to 4 September 2017. 283 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 2015, 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.