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CG · Republic of the Congo · –

Okoyo fire, 19 July 2024 Okoyo

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2024, 12:32 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2024 in Okoyo, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Cuvette-Ouest since 2016 (of 57 with a page). Number 12 in Republic of the Congo in 2024, of 103.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,137ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
19 Jul 2024 – 22 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
19 Jul
2024
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
201MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul22 Jul
20 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 2024 · 400 MW · 49 20 Jul 2024 · 3 MW · 1
19 Jul 20 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

28°high
36km/h · peak gust
52%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 769 ha in 2017, 205 ha in 2020, 297 ha in 2022, 532 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,197 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Okoyo where it started
    2,151 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.4 %

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 Jul 27.3 °C 54 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Jul 27.5 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
21 Jul 27.3 °C 52 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jul 27.8 °C 57 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Jul after 28.7 °C 55 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
24 Jul after 28.3 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
25 Jul after 27.3 °C 59 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
26 Jul after 26.2 °C 62 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
27 Jul after 26.8 °C 60 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
28 Jul after 27.6 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
29 Jul after 26.5 °C 63 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Jul after 26.0 °C 62 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
31 Jul after 27.9 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Aug after 28.0 °C 51 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 16.0, a minimum humidity of 54% and 24 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 17.

FWI at the start 16.0
Minimum humidity 54 %
Days without rain 24
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Mayama fire, July 2022
1,142 ha 1 day FWI 16.7 Min. humidity 54 % 174 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

4 days
median duration
1,322 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 10 of 17 had it)

It was 1.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 4 days, against 4 days.

Only 4 of its 17 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 7 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
36km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 22 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 10 of 17, with a median of 1.5 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2024
After · 29 Jul 2024

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 20 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
17 Jul19 Jul21 Jul
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 · 50Every 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 Okoyo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 July 2024 to 22 July 2024 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2024 to 19 July 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,137 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Okoyo (2,151 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.8 °C, humidity dropped to 52 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 17. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 1,322 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 4 of its 17 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 7 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.

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. Name: Kakamoéka → Okoyo.
  2. Last day with fire: 19 July 2024 → 22 July 2024.

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 19 July 2024 to 19 July 2024. 50 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.