Mouyondzi fire, 28 August 2017 Mouyondzi
The fire started on 28 August 2017 in Mouyondzi, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,222 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 109th largest in Bouenza since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 45 in Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 71.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,222ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 28 Aug 2017 – 4 Sept 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 25
- in a single hotspot: 35 MW
- Average daily power
- 92MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 207 ha in 2016.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mouyondzi where it started1,231 ha reached on 28 Aug0.2 %
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 25Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,188 haMouyondzi17 August 2026 · 11 days · 6 km away
- 7,494 haMouyondzi1 September 2026 · 15 days · 11 km away
- 6,651 haMouyondzi2 September 2026 · 14 days · 12 km away
- 7,049 haMouyondzi20 August 2026 · 28 days · 17 km away
- 4,701 haMouyondzi1 September 2026 · 10 days · 18 km away
- 4,434 haMouyondzi14 September 2025 · 7 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mouyondzi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2017 to 4 September 2017 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2017 to 4 September 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,222 hectares (12.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mouyondzi (1,231 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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.
- Start date: 31 August 2017 → 28 August 2017.
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
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 31 August 2017 to 4 September 2017. 25 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.