How long did the Luiza fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 June 2017 to 6 July 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2017 to 6 July 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,129 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luiza (3,867 ha, 0.2 %); Kapanga (1,299 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 42 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2017-06-25 → 2017-07-06

Luiza fire, 25 June 2017 Luiza, Kapanga

Out · last detection 6 Jul 2017, 12:36 UTC

The fire started on 25 June 2017 in Luiza, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,129 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 81th largest in Central Kasai since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 126 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luiza · 2026 Luiza · 2024 Luiza · 2019 Luiza · 2026

Burnt area: 5,129ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 25 Jun 2017 – 6 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 25 Jun; 2017
Heat detections: 161; in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 174MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jun6 Jul

Play back 6 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jun 29 Jun 2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul 6 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

33°high

42km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,203 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,531 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Luiza where it started

3,867 ha reached on 25 Jun

0.2 %
Kapanga

1,299 ha reached on 29 Jun

0.0 %

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)
2 Jul	31.7 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Jul	33.2 °C	18 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
4 Jul	31.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Jul	31.1 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Jul	30.8 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Jul after	28.1 °C	39 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
8 Jul after	32.5 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Jul after	32.2 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Jul after	33.0 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Jul after	30.7 °C	20 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Jul after	29.2 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
13 Jul after	31.7 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Jul after	31.2 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Jul after	32.4 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Jul after	32.1 °C	20 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Jun 2017

After · 13 Jul 2017

Before After

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 · 161Every 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

All fires in Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Luiza fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 June 2017 to 6 July 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2017 to 6 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,129 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luiza (3,867 ha, 0.2 %); Kapanga (1,299 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 42 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 2 July 2017 → 25 June 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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 2 July 2017 to 6 July 2017. 161 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.

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.

Where it burned