How long did the Masi-Manimba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2019 to 30 August 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2019 to 23 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,419 hectares (84.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Masi-Manimba (8,474 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

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 · 2019-08-09 → 2019-08-30

Masi-Manimba fire, 9 August 2019 Masi-Manimba

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2019, 12:19 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2019 in Masi-Manimba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,419 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in Kwilu since 2016 (of 235 with a page). Number 31 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Masi-Manimba · 2020 Masi-Manimba · 2026 Masi-Manimba · 2020 Masi-Manimba · 2020

Burnt area: 8,419ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 9 Aug 2019 – 30 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 9 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 455; in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 265MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug30 Aug

Play back 30 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Aug 13 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 19 Aug 23 Aug 29 Aug

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

28km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 31 Aug.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,786 ha in 2016, 5,035 ha in 2017, 2,039 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,246 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.3% of the area of London (84 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

Masi-Manimba where it started

8,474 ha reached on 9 Aug

0.6 %

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 area17 ha

Residents≈ 1,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 17 hectares of built-up land and about 1,900 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)
9 Aug	32.8 °C	43 %	21 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 17
10 Aug	32.0 °C	47 %	24 km/h	2.4 mm	Low 6
11 Aug	30.8 °C	51 %	17 km/h	1.9 mm	Very low 5
12 Aug	33.3 °C	41 %	20 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 9
13 Aug	33.0 °C	45 %	21 km/h	4.1 mm	Very low 3
14 Aug	33.3 °C	42 %	23 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 10
15 Aug	32.8 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
16 Aug	31.8 °C	39 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
17 Aug	31.9 °C	40 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 Aug	32.0 °C	43 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
19 Aug	32.1 °C	43 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
20 Aug	29.5 °C	56 %	26 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 16
21 Aug	30.9 °C	49 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
22 Aug	32.4 °C	45 %	20 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 17
23 Aug	32.4 °C	43 %	25 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 18
24 Aug	30.1 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
25 Aug	28.3 °C	55 %	24 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 17
26 Aug	29.2 °C	54 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
27 Aug	33.7 °C	40 %	20 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
28 Aug	33.7 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 20
29 Aug	33.7 °C	42 %	23 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 15
30 Aug	31.8 °C	50 %	22 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 13
31 Aug after	32.5 °C	47 %	23 km/h	3.5 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Aug 2019

After · 6 Sept 2019

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 · 455Every 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 Masi-Manimba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2019 to 30 August 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2019 to 23 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,419 hectares (84.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Masi-Manimba (8,474 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 23 August 2019 → 30 August 2019.

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 9 August 2019 to 23 August 2019. 455 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.

Where it burned