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Manono fire, 29 May 2017 Manono

Out · last detection 19 Jun 2017, 11:14 UTC

The fire started on 29 May 2017 in Manono, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,192 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 133th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 81 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manono · 2026Kabalo · 2017Manono · 2017Kabalo · 2019

Burnt area
6,192ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
29 May 2017 – 19 Jun 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 May
2017
Heat detections
208
in a single hotspot: 241 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 May19 Jun
19 Jun 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 May 2017 · 372 MW · 10 30 May 2017 · 20 MW · 4 31 May 2017 · 6 MW · 1 1 Jun 2017 · 3 MW · 1 2 Jun 2017 · 10 MW · 3 3 Jun 2017 · 166 MW · 7 4 Jun 2017 · 2 MW · 1 5 Jun 2017 · 19 MW · 9 6 Jun 2017 · 52 MW · 15 7 Jun 2017 · 58 MW · 15 8 Jun 2017 · 27 MW · 6 9 Jun 2017 · 1 MW · 1 10 Jun 2017 · 23 MW · 11 11 Jun 2017 · 65 MW · 15 12 Jun 2017 · 86 MW · 16 13 Jun 2017 · 297 MW · 30 14 Jun 2017 · 109 MW · 11 15 Jun 2017 · 2 MW · 2 16 Jun 2017 · 1,051 MW · 20 17 Jun 2017 · 50 MW · 12 18 Jun 2017 · 107 MW · 14 19 Jun 2017 · 13 MW · 4
29 May 2 Jun 6 Jun 10 Jun 14 Jun 16 Jun 18 Jun

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
42km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,104 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Manono where it started
    6,223 ha reached on 29 May
    0.2 %

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)
5 Jun 35.1 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jun 34.8 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Jun 34.9 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Jun 35.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Jun 34.9 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Jun 34.8 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jun 35.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jun 34.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Jun 34.4 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Jun 33.2 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Jun 34.8 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jun 35.0 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jun 34.3 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jun 33.5 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Jun 34.6 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jun after 34.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jun after 33.8 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jun after 33.7 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jun after 34.9 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jun after 34.5 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jun after 34.4 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jun after 34.5 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jun after 33.7 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Jun after 33.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jun after 33.9 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 May 2017
After · 26 Jun 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 · 208Every 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 Manono fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 May 2017 to 19 June 2017 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 June 2017 to 19 June 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,192 hectares (61.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manono (6,223 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 5 June 2017 → 29 May 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 5 June 2017 to 19 June 2017. 208 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.