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Lubudi fire, July 2020 Lubudi

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2020, 23:53 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2020 in Lubudi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,434 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 73 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamina · 2026

Burnt area
7,434ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
8 Jul 2020 – 24 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
8 Jul
2020
Heat detections
248
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul24 Jul
24 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2020 · 2 MW · 3 11 Jul 2020 · 8 MW · 2 12 Jul 2020 · 114 MW · 9 13 Jul 2020 · 29 MW · 3 14 Jul 2020 · 30 MW · 13 15 Jul 2020 · 442 MW · 94 16 Jul 2020 · 863 MW · 96 17 Jul 2020 · 46 MW · 12 18 Jul 2020 · 44 MW · 4 19 Jul 2020 · 15 MW · 5 21 Jul 2020 · 10 MW · 2 22 Jul 2020 · 7 MW · 2 23 Jul 2020 · 4 MW · 1 24 Jul 2020 · 1 MW · 2
8 Jul 12 Jul 14 Jul 16 Jul 18 Jul 21 Jul 23 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

31°high
73km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,466 ha in 2016, 2,806 ha in 2017, 2,434 ha in 2018, 3,210 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,295 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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
    7,467 ha reached on 8 Jul
    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 area0.39 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.39 hectares of built-up land and about 60 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)
8 Jul 29.4 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jul 30.2 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jul 30.1 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jul 31.2 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Jul 30.6 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jul 29.5 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Jul 29.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jul 28.2 °C 21 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jul 26.3 °C 20 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
17 Jul 24.3 °C 20 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Jul 23.2 °C 23 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jul 25.0 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jul 26.5 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Jul 27.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul 28.2 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul 27.6 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jul 27.4 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Jul after 27.9 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Jul after 27.6 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Jul after 26.8 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Jul after 27.5 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Jul after 28.1 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Jul after 28.8 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul after 29.4 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Aug after 28.9 °C 23 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Aug after 28.8 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Aug after 28.5 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2020
After · 31 Jul 2020

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 · 248Every 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 8 July 2020 to 24 July 2020 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2020 to 17 July 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,434 hectares (74.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lubudi (7,467 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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: 17 July 2020 → 24 July 2020.
  2. Start date: 14 July 2020 → 8 July 2020.

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 14 July 2020 to 17 July 2020. 248 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.