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Sandoa fire, 4 July 2022 Sandoa

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2022, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2022 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,163 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 12 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2022, of 106.

Burnt area
12,163ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
4 Jul 2022 – 10 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
4 Jul
2022
Heat detections
396
in a single hotspot: 200 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Jul 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul10 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

45678910

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
47km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,491 ha in 2016, 7,122 ha in 2017, 5,575 ha in 2018, 5,227 ha in 2019, 5,467 ha in 2020, 3,334 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,204 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandoa where it started
    12,225 ha reached on 4 Jul
    0.4 %

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)
4 Jul 30.5 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Jul 30.4 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul 29.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jul 29.3 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Jul 30.4 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jul 30.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Jul 31.0 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jul after 31.1 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul after 30.1 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul after 30.3 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul after 30.9 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul after 30.6 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul after 30.5 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul after 30.4 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul after 29.8 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Jul after 31.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jul after 31.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Jul after 31.1 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
22 Jul after 31.1 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2022
After · 17 Jul 2022

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 · 396Every 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 4 July 2022 and 10 July 2022: 7 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 12,163 hectares (121.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (12,225 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 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.