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Sandoa fire, July 2021 Sandoa

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2021, 11:46 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2021 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,016 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 14 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2021, of 97.

Burnt area
10,016ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
28 Jul 2021 – 10 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
28 Jul
2021
Heat detections
339
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Aug 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

282930311234567810

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
16%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 21 Aug.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,765 ha in 2016, 6,771 ha in 2017, 2,241 ha in 2018, 3,939 ha in 2019, 4,267 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,488 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandoa where it started
    10,075 ha reached on 23 Jul
    0.3 %

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)
23 Jul 29.5 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jul 30.7 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jul 29.8 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul 26.9 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Jul 26.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul 29.6 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul 30.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul 31.2 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul 30.4 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Aug 29.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug 30.1 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Aug 30.9 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug 31.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug 31.6 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug 31.9 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Aug 30.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Aug 31.1 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Aug 31.0 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Aug 32.5 °C 19 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Aug after 31.8 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Aug after 31.7 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Aug after 32.9 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Aug after 30.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Aug after 32.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Aug after 32.9 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Aug after 32.4 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Aug after 32.9 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Aug after 32.4 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Aug after 31.0 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Aug after 29.2 °C 47 % 30 km/h 2.6 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2021
After · 17 Aug 2021

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 · 339Every 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 28 July 2021 and 10 August 2021: 14 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 10,016 hectares (100.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (10,075 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.