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Mvouti fire, 10 August 2026 Mvouti

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2026, 13:01 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2026 in Mvouti, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,500 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 114th largest in Pool since 2016 (of 333 with a page). Number 139 in Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 360.

Compare with…
Burnt area
1,500ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
10 Aug 2026 – 10 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Aug
2026
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
357MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2026 · 357 MW · 16

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
27km/h · peak gust
66%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2020, 510 ha in 2022, 920 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,043 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 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. Mvouti where it started
    1,509 ha reached on 10 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
10 Aug 26.9 °C 66 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
11 Aug after 26.4 °C 68 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
12 Aug after 29.6 °C 59 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
13 Aug after 27.9 °C 70 % 27 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 12
14 Aug after 27.6 °C 64 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
15 Aug after 26.8 °C 66 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Aug after 26.3 °C 69 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
17 Aug after 29.8 °C 57 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
18 Aug after 27.6 °C 64 % 24 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 16
19 Aug after 26.8 °C 64 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Aug after 31.8 °C 51 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2026
After · 17 Aug 2026

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 8 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak67 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1070 µg/m³
Optical depth1.43
8910111213
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 · 16Every 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 Mvouti fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2026 and 10 August 2026: 1 day 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 1,500 hectares (15.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mvouti (1,509 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 66 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, 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). 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 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. 16 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 2025, 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 (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.