How long did the Manono fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 May 2022 to 20 June 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 June 2022 to 13 June 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,573 hectares (55.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Manono (5,607 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2022-05-31 → 2022-06-20

Manono fire, May 2022 Manono

Out · last detection 19 Jun 2022, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 31 May 2022 in Manono, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,573 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 170th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 77 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manono · 2026 Manono · 2018

Burnt area: 5,573ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 31 May 2022 – 20 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 31 May; 2022
Heat detections: 191; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 116MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 May20 Jun

Play back 19 Jun 2022

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jun 5 Jun 8 Jun 10 Jun 11 Jun 14 Jun 17 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

33°high

42km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,205 ha in 2016, 1,040 ha in 2017, 922 ha in 2018, 573 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,421 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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

Manono where it started

5,607 ha reached on 2 Jun

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	Danger (FWI)
4 Jun	32.4 °C	24 %	40 km/h	High 38
5 Jun	32.3 °C	27 %	37 km/h	High 37
6 Jun	32.5 °C	28 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
7 Jun	32.6 °C	24 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
8 Jun	32.3 °C	23 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
9 Jun	32.4 °C	24 %	30 km/h	High 36
10 Jun	32.7 °C	27 %	31 km/h	High 36
11 Jun	33.4 °C	28 %	34 km/h	High 38
12 Jun	33.1 °C	28 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
13 Jun	33.3 °C	26 %	35 km/h	Very high 40
14 Jun	34.0 °C	26 %	25 km/h	Very high 39
15 Jun	34.8 °C	27 %	25 km/h	High 38
16 Jun	35.7 °C	22 %	34 km/h	Very high 40
17 Jun	35.1 °C	22 %	36 km/h	Very high 41
18 Jun	34.3 °C	25 %	33 km/h	Very high 40
19 Jun	33.4 °C	27 %	22 km/h	High 36
20 Jun	32.7 °C	30 %	23 km/h	High 34
21 Jun after	33.3 °C	24 %	37 km/h	Very high 40
22 Jun after	33.2 °C	23 %	31 km/h	Very high 39
23 Jun after	33.6 °C	20 %	31 km/h	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 May 2022

After · 27 Jun 2022

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 · 191Every 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 Manono fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 May 2022 to 20 June 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 June 2022 to 13 June 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,573 hectares (55.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Manono (5,607 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 13 June 2022 → 20 June 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 4 June 2022 → 31 May 2022.

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 4 June 2022 to 13 June 2022. 191 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