Skip to content
worldfires
en
CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · →

Moba fire, 23 September 2022 Moba

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2022, 23:29 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2022 in Moba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,158 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 17 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moba · 2018Moba · 2020Moba · 2026Moba · 2016

Burnt area
10,158ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
23 Sept 2022 – 14 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
23 Sept
2022
Heat detections
352
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
162MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept14 Oct
14 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 24 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 26 Sept 2022 · 69 MW · 8 27 Sept 2022 · 8 MW · 3 28 Sept 2022 · 13 MW · 2 29 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 1 2 Oct 2022 · 393 MW · 24 3 Oct 2022 · 221 MW · 47 4 Oct 2022 · 941 MW · 117 5 Oct 2022 · 479 MW · 69 6 Oct 2022 · 75 MW · 17 7 Oct 2022 · 183 MW · 18 8 Oct 2022 · 29 MW · 13 9 Oct 2022 · 0 MW · 1 10 Oct 2022 · 4 MW · 1 12 Oct 2022 · 14 MW · 2 14 Oct 2022 · 314 MW · 27
23 Sept 27 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct 8 Oct 12 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
35km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,471 ha in 2016, 125 ha in 2017, 5,326 ha in 2018, 938 ha in 2019, 4,980 ha in 2020, 3,377 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,567 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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. Moba where it started
    10,224 ha reached on 23 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area8.4 ha
Residents≈ 2,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.4 hectares of built-up land and about 2,000 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 Sept 26.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
24 Sept 26.1 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Sept 26.0 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Sept 27.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
27 Sept 26.6 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Sept 25.5 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Sept 24.7 °C 37 % 24 km/h 1.5 mm Low 9
30 Sept 25.3 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
1 Oct 26.2 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
2 Oct 27.2 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Oct 25.0 °C 41 % 29 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 11
4 Oct 26.2 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 19
5 Oct 26.9 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Oct 26.8 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Oct 26.5 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Oct 25.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Oct 25.9 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
10 Oct 26.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Oct 26.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Oct 26.3 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
13 Oct 26.4 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Oct 26.7 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Oct after 26.5 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct after 26.6 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Oct after 25.7 °C 42 % 35 km/h 2.3 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2022
After · 21 Oct 2022

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 16 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 144 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 82: 5.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak144 µg/m³
Days over the guideline27 days
PM10207 µg/m³
Optical depth1.56
212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617
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 · 352Every 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 Moba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 14 October 2022 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2022 to 8 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,158 hectares (101.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Moba (10,224 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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: 8 October 2022 → 14 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 29 September 2022 → 23 September 2022.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 29 September 2022 to 8 October 2022. 352 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.