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CG · Republic of the Congo · –

Mouyondzi fire, 22 August 2025 Mouyondzi

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2025, 13:24 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2025 in Mouyondzi, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,171 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 50 in Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 73.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
1,171ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
22 Aug 2025 – 1 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
22 Aug
2025
Heat detections
47
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
169MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug1 Sept
1 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2025 · 165 MW · 8 29 Aug 2025 · 495 MW · 37 30 Aug 2025 · 6 MW · 1 1 Sept 2025 · 11 MW · 1
25 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 1 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

31°high
31km/h · peak gust
50%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 199 ha in 2016, 618 ha in 2018, 164 ha in 2021, 900 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,030 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (12 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. Mouyondzi where it started
    1,180 ha reached on 25 Aug
    0.2 %

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.

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 12 % of the area in Republic of the Congo

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Aug 26.9 °C 59 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
23 Aug 28.0 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Aug 28.6 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Aug 30.9 °C 50 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Aug 29.7 °C 56 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Aug 29.5 °C 54 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Aug 29.0 °C 59 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
29 Aug 28.9 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
30 Aug 28.9 °C 54 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
31 Aug 27.5 °C 62 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
1 Sept 30.1 °C 55 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Sept after 28.5 °C 63 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
3 Sept after 28.3 °C 59 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Sept after 28.8 °C 56 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
5 Sept after 30.2 °C 55 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
6 Sept after 29.1 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
7 Sept after 32.1 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
8 Sept after 29.8 °C 55 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Sept after 28.1 °C 61 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
10 Sept after 30.6 °C 56 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
11 Sept after 30.8 °C 56 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2025
After · 8 Sept 2025

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 27 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth1.22
27 Aug29 Aug31 Aug2 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 · 47Every 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 Mouyondzi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2025 to 1 September 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2025 to 30 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,171 hectares (11.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mouyondzi (1,180 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 50 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Name: Impfondo → Mouyondzi.
  2. Last day with fire: 30 August 2025 → 1 September 2025.
  3. Start date: 29 August 2025 → 22 August 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 29 August 2025 to 30 August 2025. 47 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.