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Luiza fire, 2 July 2019 Luiza

Out · last detection 7 Jul 2019, 12:30 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2019 in Luiza, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,629 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 24th largest in Central Kasai since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 24 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luiza · 2016Luiza · 2017Luiza · 2024Luiza · 2019

Burnt area
9,629ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
2 Jul 2019 – 6 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
2 Jul
2019
Heat detections
302
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
587MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul6 Jul
7 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2019 · 190 MW · 25 3 Jul 2019 · 1,792 MW · 167 4 Jul 2019 · 1,174 MW · 56 5 Jul 2019 · 57 MW · 13 6 Jul 2019 · 218 MW · 24 7 Jul 2019 · 89 MW · 3
2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul 6 Jul 7 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
41km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,132 ha in 2016, 5,593 ha in 2017, 4,658 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,065 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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. Luiza where it started
    9,702 ha reached on 30 Jun
    0.6 %

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)
30 Jun 32.1 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Jul 32.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Jul 32.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Jul 32.2 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Jul 32.5 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Jul 32.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul 31.9 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jul after 31.8 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Jul after 31.6 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Jul after 31.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Jul after 30.4 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 32.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Jul after 30.9 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul after 27.7 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Jul after 31.9 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul after 32.1 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jul after 30.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul after 30.8 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jul after 30.8 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul after 31.0 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Jul after 30.6 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Jul after 30.2 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul after 30.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2019
After · 13 Jul 2019

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 · 302Every 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 Luiza fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 July 2019 and 6 July 2019: 5 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 9,629 hectares (96.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luiza (9,702 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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. 302 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.