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CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · –

Masi-Manimba fire, 22 May 2026 Masi-Manimba, Feshi

Out · last detection 11 Jun 2026, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 22 May 2026 in Masi-Manimba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,207 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 69 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 515.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
18,207ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
22 May 2026 – 11 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
22 May
2026
Heat detections
487
in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
437MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 May11 Jun
11 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 May 2026 · 286 MW · 21 26 May 2026 · 40 MW · 6 27 May 2026 · 89 MW · 10 28 May 2026 · 161 MW · 20 29 May 2026 · 376 MW · 20 30 May 2026 · 755 MW · 52 31 May 2026 · 220 MW · 21 1 Jun 2026 · 252 MW · 26 2 Jun 2026 · 2,289 MW · 118 3 Jun 2026 · 987 MW · 73 4 Jun 2026 · 557 MW · 42 5 Jun 2026 · 170 MW · 5 6 Jun 2026 · 76 MW · 9 9 Jun 2026 · 534 MW · 46 10 Jun 2026 · 188 MW · 17 11 Jun 2026 · 9 MW · 1
25 May 29 May 2 Jun 6 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (20 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

32°high
34km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 21 Jun.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,979 ha in 2016, 2,127 ha in 2017, 2,564 ha in 2018, 6,078 ha in 2019, 987 ha in 2020, 7,643 ha in 2021, 6,999 ha in 2022, 596 ha in 2023, 2,835 ha in 2024, 2,234 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,931 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (182 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
    14,060 ha reached on 25 May
    1.0 %
  2. 4,278 ha reached on 25 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area14 ha
Residents≈ 1,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 1,700 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
22 May 29.8 °C 51 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
23 May 30.0 °C 60 % 31 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 4
24 May 31.0 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
25 May 31.9 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 May 31.5 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
27 May 31.2 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
28 May 31.8 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
29 May 31.9 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 May 31.8 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
31 May 31.6 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Jun 32.0 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
2 Jun 31.8 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
3 Jun 32.1 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Jun 31.4 °C 32 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
5 Jun 31.2 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
6 Jun 31.5 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Jun 30.9 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
8 Jun 29.8 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Jun 32.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Jun 31.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Jun 30.5 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Jun after 31.1 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Jun after 31.0 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Jun after 32.0 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Jun after 29.9 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
16 Jun after 28.9 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
17 Jun after 29.4 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
18 Jun after 27.5 °C 57 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
19 Jun after 30.9 °C 48 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
20 Jun after 32.7 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Jun after 30.8 °C 45 % 27 km/h 3.8 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 May 2026
After · 18 Jun 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 4 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 174 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 116: 7.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak174 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10182 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
23 May27 May31 May4 Jun
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 487Every 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 22 May 2026 to 11 June 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 May 2026 to 4 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,207 hectares (182.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Masi-Manimba (14,060 ha, 1.0 %); Feshi (4,278 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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: 4 June 2026 → 11 June 2026.
  2. Start date: 25 May 2026 → 22 May 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 May 2026 to 4 June 2026. 487 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 2025, 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.