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Poko fire, January 2016 Poko

Out · last detection 1 Mar 2016, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2016 in Poko, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,210 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 42th largest in Lower Uele since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 132 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2016, of 153.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Poko · 2026Poko · 2026

Burnt area
5,210ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
29 Jan 2016 – 1 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 Jan
2016
Heat detections
349
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
79MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan1 Mar
1 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jan 2016 · 28 MW · 5 2 Feb 2016 · 8 MW · 1 3 Feb 2016 · 31 MW · 7 4 Feb 2016 · 27 MW · 4 5 Feb 2016 · 17 MW · 5 6 Feb 2016 · 51 MW · 14 7 Feb 2016 · 118 MW · 14 8 Feb 2016 · 18 MW · 5 9 Feb 2016 · 44 MW · 7 10 Feb 2016 · 34 MW · 21 11 Feb 2016 · 38 MW · 10 12 Feb 2016 · 89 MW · 16 13 Feb 2016 · 75 MW · 16 14 Feb 2016 · 32 MW · 11 15 Feb 2016 · 108 MW · 20 16 Feb 2016 · 78 MW · 13 18 Feb 2016 · 314 MW · 32 19 Feb 2016 · 138 MW · 14 20 Feb 2016 · 94 MW · 4 21 Feb 2016 · 54 MW · 4 22 Feb 2016 · 106 MW · 16 23 Feb 2016 · 137 MW · 20 24 Feb 2016 · 185 MW · 26 25 Feb 2016 · 181 MW · 35 26 Feb 2016 · 64 MW · 20 29 Feb 2016 · 52 MW · 8 1 Mar 2016 · 9 MW · 1
29 Jan 5 Feb 9 Feb 13 Feb 18 Feb 22 Feb 26 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 1 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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. Poko where it started
    5,245 ha reached on 29 Jan
    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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Feb 38.3 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Feb 37.7 °C 15 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Feb 34.8 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Feb 33.8 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Feb 35.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Feb 35.4 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Feb 36.0 °C 8 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Feb 35.5 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Feb 35.8 °C 13 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Feb 35.0 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Feb 35.0 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Feb 36.1 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Feb 35.0 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
18 Feb 35.3 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
19 Feb 33.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Feb 34.7 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Feb 33.0 °C 47 % 30 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 16
22 Feb 36.3 °C 33 % 26 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 17
23 Feb 34.6 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Feb 35.0 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Feb 35.8 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Feb 34.9 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Feb 35.1 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
28 Feb 35.8 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Feb 36.3 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Mar 32.7 °C 49 % 33 km/h 2.6 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jan 2016
After · 8 Mar 2016

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 · 349Every 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 Poko fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 January 2016 to 1 March 2016 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 February 2016 to 26 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,210 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Poko (5,245 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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: 26 February 2016 → 1 March 2016.
  2. Start date: 5 February 2016 → 29 January 2016.

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 5 February 2016 to 26 February 2016. 349 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 (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.