How long did the Mouyondzi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 August 2018 to 25 August 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 August 2018 to 25 August 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,897 hectares (29.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mouyondzi (2,917 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 34 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.

CG · Republic of the Congo · 14 Aug 2018 – 25 Aug 2018

Mouyondzi fire, 14 August 2018 Mouyondzi

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2018, 23:59 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2018 in Mouyondzi, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,897 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Bouenza since 2016 (of 181 with a page). The largest in Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mouyondzi · 2016 Mouyondzi · 2017 Mouyondzi · 2026 Mouyondzi · 2026

Burnt area: 2,897ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 14 Aug 2018 – 25 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 66; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 154MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug25 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 21 Aug 24 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

34km/h · peak gust

47%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 420 ha in 2016, 93 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (29 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

Mouyondzi where it started

2,917 ha reached on 14 Aug

0.6 %

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)
19 Aug	29.2 °C	56 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 17
20 Aug	27.4 °C	60 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
21 Aug	30.2 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Aug	29.1 °C	51 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
23 Aug	30.3 °C	49 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Aug	30.6 °C	48 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
25 Aug	28.0 °C	60 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
26 Aug after	25.8 °C	71 %	21 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 14
27 Aug after	31.6 °C	51 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
28 Aug after	28.2 °C	62 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
29 Aug after	26.3 °C	65 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
30 Aug after	27.3 °C	62 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
31 Aug after	29.3 °C	58 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
1 Sept after	26.9 °C	62 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
2 Sept after	29.5 °C	53 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
3 Sept after	31.1 °C	53 %	26 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 18
4 Sept after	27.9 °C	60 %	27 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Aug 2018

After · 1 Sept 2018

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 · 66Every 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 Republic of the Congo

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mouyondzi fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 August 2018 to 25 August 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 August 2018 to 25 August 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,897 hectares (29.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mouyondzi (2,917 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 34 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 19 August 2018 → 14 August 2018.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 19 August 2018 to 25 August 2018. 66 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.

Where it burned