How long did the Moba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2020 and 10 September 2020: 13 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,707 hectares (217.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Moba (21,879 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2020-08-29 → 2020-09-10

Moba fire, August 2020 Moba

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2020, 23:34 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2020 in Moba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,707 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 14 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moba · 2016 Moba · 2017 Moba · 2017 Moba · 2026

Burnt area: 21,707ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 29 Aug 2020 – 10 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 29 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 1,074; in a single hotspot: 188 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 688MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug10 Sept

Play back 11 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 10 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

29°high

36km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,676 ha in 2016, 11,827 ha in 2017, 7,250 ha in 2018, 9,531 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,227 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (217 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

Moba where it started

21,879 ha reached on 23 Aug

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area13 ha

Residents≈ 3,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 13 hectares of built-up land and about 3,200 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)
23 Aug	25.5 °C	42 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Aug	25.8 °C	44 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Aug	26.4 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Aug	27.2 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug	27.6 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
28 Aug	28.0 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
29 Aug	28.2 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
30 Aug	28.3 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
31 Aug	27.6 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Sept	27.0 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Sept	27.4 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Sept	26.4 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Sept	27.4 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Sept	27.3 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Sept	27.6 °C	32 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Sept	25.9 °C	37 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Sept	27.1 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Sept	26.0 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Sept	26.0 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Sept after	27.1 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Sept after	26.2 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
13 Sept after	27.0 °C	42 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Sept after	27.1 °C	39 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Sept after	27.7 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Sept after	28.6 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Sept after	28.7 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Sept after	28.5 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
19 Sept after	28.0 °C	38 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Sept after	27.1 °C	46 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
21 Sept after	28.3 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
22 Sept after	27.8 °C	44 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
23 Sept after	27.0 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Sept after	27.9 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Sept after	28.0 °C	39 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
26 Sept after	26.9 °C	49 %	25 km/h	2.2 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Aug 2020

After · 17 Sept 2020

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 · 1,074Every 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 Moba fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2020 and 10 September 2020: 13 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,707 hectares (217.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Moba (21,879 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,074 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