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Masi-Manimba fire, 5 June 2018 Masi-Manimba

Out · last detection 20 Jun 2018, 11:53 UTC

The fire started on 5 June 2018 in Masi-Manimba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,956 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 47th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 235 with a page). Number 15 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

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Suggestions: Masi-Manimba · 2017Masi-Manimba · 2026Masi-Manimba · 2022Masi-Manimba · 2026

Burnt area
12,956ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
5 Jun 2018 – 20 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
5 Jun
2018
Heat detections
346
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
494MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jun20 Jun
20 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jun 2018 · 28 MW · 8 7 Jun 2018 · 567 MW · 36 8 Jun 2018 · 685 MW · 44 9 Jun 2018 · 893 MW · 46 10 Jun 2018 · 1,041 MW · 52 11 Jun 2018 · 2,103 MW · 103 12 Jun 2018 · 980 MW · 40 13 Jun 2018 · 68 MW · 5 14 Jun 2018 · 4 MW · 1 15 Jun 2018 · 15 MW · 3 17 Jun 2018 · 7 MW · 2 19 Jun 2018 · 24 MW · 5 20 Jun 2018 · 2 MW · 1
6 Jun 8 Jun 10 Jun 11 Jun 12 Jun 14 Jun 17 Jun 20 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

32°high
36km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,549 ha in 2016, 6,715 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,387 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.2% of the area of London (130 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. Masi-Manimba where it started
    13,053 ha reached on 6 Jun
    0.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area20 ha
Residents≈ 2,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 20 hectares of built-up land and about 2,200 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
5 Jun 30.4 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
6 Jun 29.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
7 Jun 29.1 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
8 Jun 31.0 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
9 Jun 30.8 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 Jun 31.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
11 Jun 31.3 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Jun 31.1 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Jun 32.1 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Jun 31.3 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Jun 31.3 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
16 Jun 31.7 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
17 Jun 31.4 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Jun 32.4 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
19 Jun 30.7 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Jun 29.3 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Jun after 28.7 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jun after 28.7 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Jun after 29.1 °C 45 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Jun after 28.5 °C 48 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Jun after 30.4 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Jun after 29.4 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
27 Jun after 29.1 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Jun after 29.2 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
29 Jun after 29.4 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
30 Jun after 30.7 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 May 2018
After · 27 Jun 2018

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 · 346Every 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 Masi-Manimba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 June 2018 to 20 June 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 June 2018 to 13 June 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,956 hectares (129.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Masi-Manimba (13,053 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 13 June 2018 → 20 June 2018.
  2. Start date: 7 June 2018 → 5 June 2018.

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 7 June 2018 to 13 June 2018. 346 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 2020, 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.