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Manono fire, 21 June 2017 Manono

Out · last detection 4 Jul 2017, 22:37 UTC

The fire started on 21 June 2017 in Manono, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,611 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 26 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manono · 2022Manono · 2026Manono · 2022Manono · 2017

Burnt area
9,611ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
21 Jun 2017 – 3 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
21 Jun
2017
Heat detections
585
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
356MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jun3 Jul
4 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jun 2017 · 145 MW · 25 22 Jun 2017 · 203 MW · 21 23 Jun 2017 · 0 MW · 1 24 Jun 2017 · 64 MW · 10 25 Jun 2017 · 33 MW · 10 26 Jun 2017 · 1,647 MW · 105 27 Jun 2017 · 931 MW · 79 28 Jun 2017 · 352 MW · 40 29 Jun 2017 · 129 MW · 20 30 Jun 2017 · 113 MW · 11 1 Jul 2017 · 827 MW · 45 2 Jul 2017 · 280 MW · 39 3 Jul 2017 · 181 MW · 29 4 Jul 2017 · 85 MW · 16
21 Jun 23 Jun 25 Jun 26 Jun 27 Jun 29 Jun 1 Jul 3 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

34°high
42km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,207 ha in 2016.

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. Manono where it started
    9,659 ha reached on 14 Jun
    0.3 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
14 Jun 32.7 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jun 33.4 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jun 34.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jun 33.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jun 32.7 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jun 33.9 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jun 33.7 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jun 33.2 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Jun 33.3 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jun 34.5 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Jun 34.0 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jun 34.0 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jun 33.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Jun 33.4 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jun 33.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jun 33.8 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jun 34.4 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Jul 33.7 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jul 33.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Jul 33.8 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jul after 33.6 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Jul after 33.0 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jul after 29.8 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul after 30.2 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jul after 32.1 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jul after 33.6 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Jul after 34.0 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jul after 34.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Jul after 33.3 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul after 33.3 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Jul after 34.0 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2017
After · 10 Jul 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 · 585Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 June 2017 and 3 July 2017: 13 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 9,611 hectares (96.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manono (9,659 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 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. 585 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 2015, 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.