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Sandoa fire, 11 August 2017 Sandoa

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2017, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2017 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,727 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 60 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2017, of 138.

Burnt area
6,727ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
11 Aug 2017 – 16 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
11 Aug
2017
Heat detections
171
in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Aug 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug16 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

111213141516

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
45km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,280 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandoa where it started
    6,766 ha reached on 10 Aug
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
11 Aug 30.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Aug 31.2 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug 31.4 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Aug 31.6 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Aug 32.1 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Aug 32.5 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Aug after 31.9 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Aug after 30.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug after 31.1 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug after 30.2 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Aug after 31.7 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Aug after 32.1 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Aug after 31.5 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug after 33.5 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Aug after 33.8 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Aug after 33.4 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2017
After · 23 Aug 2017

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 · 171Every 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 Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sandoa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2017 and 16 August 2017: 6 days 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 6,727 hectares (67.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (6,766 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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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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.