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Nyunzu fire, 3 July 2018 Nyunzu

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2018, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 3 July 2018 in Nyunzu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,037 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 225th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 124 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyunzu · 2018Nyunzu · 2016Nyunzu · 2026Nyunzu · 2026

Burnt area
5,037ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
3 Jul 2018 – 19 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
3 Jul
2018
Heat detections
108
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
134MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jul19 Jul
19 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

3 Jul 2018 · 40 MW · 8 7 Jul 2018 · 1 MW · 1 10 Jul 2018 · 776 MW · 40 11 Jul 2018 · 243 MW · 39 12 Jul 2018 · 77 MW · 13 13 Jul 2018 · 11 MW · 3 15 Jul 2018 · 18 MW · 1 17 Jul 2018 · 25 MW · 2 19 Jul 2018 · 12 MW · 1
3 Jul 10 Jul 12 Jul 15 Jul 19 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
39km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 575 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Nyunzu where it started
    5,070 ha reached on 3 Jul
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
10 Jul 34.1 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jul 34.4 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Jul 33.6 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Jul 33.9 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jul 35.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul 34.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 33.3 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jul 32.5 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul 32.7 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Jul 32.6 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Jul after 32.9 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jul after 34.0 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Jul after 34.0 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Jul after 33.5 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jun 2018
After · 26 Jul 2018

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 · 108Every 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 Nyunzu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 July 2018 to 19 July 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 July 2018 to 13 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,037 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nyunzu (5,070 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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: 13 July 2018 → 19 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 10 July 2018 → 3 July 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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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 10 July 2018 to 13 July 2018. 108 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.