How long did the Lusambo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 August 2026 to 4 September 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,450 hectares (154.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lusambo (15,550 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 · 2026-08-13 → 2026-09-04

Lusambo fire, 13 August 2026 Lusambo

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2026, 11:51 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2026 in Lusambo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,450 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 106 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 15,450ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 13 Aug 2026 – 4 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 13 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 298; in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start: 21; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 182MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug4 Sept

Play back 4 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 23 Aug 27 Aug 31 Aug 4 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

36°high

32km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 5 Sept.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,665 ha in 2017, 3,684 ha in 2019, 4,296 ha in 2020, 49 ha in 2021, 787 ha in 2023, 4,471 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,190 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (154 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

Lusambo where it started

15,550 ha reached on 13 Aug

1.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area13 ha

Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 13 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Aug	31.9 °C	43 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Aug	33.5 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Aug	34.1 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Aug	32.6 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Aug	33.6 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Aug	33.5 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Aug	35.0 °C	20 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Aug	31.3 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Aug	31.8 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Aug	32.7 °C	40 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Aug	31.7 °C	44 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 Aug	33.0 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Aug	32.7 °C	36 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Aug	31.8 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Aug	35.8 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Aug	33.5 °C	41 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Aug	31.2 °C	48 %	25 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
30 Aug	32.5 °C	42 %	19 km/h	0.3 mm	High 23
31 Aug	33.5 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
1 Sept	34.6 °C	33 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Sept	34.0 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Sept	33.1 °C	40 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Sept	32.9 °C	44 %	29 km/h	0.5 mm	High 28
5 Sept after	34.1 °C	36 %	24 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Aug 2026

After · 11 Sept 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 139 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 101: 6.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak139 µg/m³

Days over the guideline28 days

PM10146 µg/m³

Optical depth1.88

WHO 15

1112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234567

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 · 298Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lusambo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 August 2026 to 4 September 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,450 hectares (154.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lusambo (15,550 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 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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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 August 2026 to 28 August 2026. 298 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned