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CG · Republic of the Congo · –

Mindouli fire, 1 September 2026 Mindouli

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2026, 12:06 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2026 in Mindouli, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,003 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 58th largest in Pool since 2016 (of 332 with a page). Number 76 in Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 360.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mindouli · 2025Mouyondzi · 2026Luozi · 2026Mouyondzi · 2026

Burnt area
2,003ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
1 Sept 2026 – 14 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2026
Heat detections
40
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
79MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept14 Sept
14 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2026 · 46 MW · 5 2 Sept 2026 · 4 MW · 1 4 Sept 2026 · 447 MW · 18 5 Sept 2026 · 8 MW · 9 7 Sept 2026 · 115 MW · 4 9 Sept 2026 · 7 MW · 1 12 Sept 2026 · 3 MW · 1 14 Sept 2026 · 2 MW · 1
1 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 12 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
31km/h · peak gust
45%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 321 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (20 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. Mindouli where it started
    2,017 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.7 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
1 Sept 34.9 °C 45 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
2 Sept 30.1 °C 59 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
3 Sept 28.3 °C 66 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
4 Sept 33.4 °C 49 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
5 Sept 29.7 °C 61 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
6 Sept 30.7 °C 56 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 Sept 34.3 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
8 Sept 31.5 °C 55 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
9 Sept 28.8 °C 59 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
10 Sept 32.4 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Sept 30.5 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
12 Sept 31.9 °C 53 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Sept 28.6 °C 62 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Sept 34.0 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Sept after 30.5 °C 54 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Sept after 27.9 °C 61 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
17 Sept after 29.5 °C 57 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
18 Sept after 30.0 °C 61 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
19 Sept after 30.4 °C 58 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
20 Sept after 32.8 °C 50 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Sept after 29.9 °C 58 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Sept after 33.1 °C 43 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
23 Sept after 34.2 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Sept after 32.8 °C 51 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2026
After · 21 Sept 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 9 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 104 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak104 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10107 µg/m³
Optical depth2.49
30 Aug2 Sept5 Sept8 Sept
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 · 40Every 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 Republic of the Congo

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mindouli fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 14 September 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 7 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,003 hectares (20.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mindouli (2,017 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 31 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 Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 7 September 2026 → 14 September 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2026 to 7 September 2026. 40 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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (Public Domain). 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.