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Sandoa fire, 5 July 2023 Sandoa

Out · last detection 13 Jul 2023, 12:25 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2023 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,967 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 10 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2023, of 76.

Burnt area
10,967ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
5 Jul 2023 – 12 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
5 Jul
2023
Heat detections
368
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Jul 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul12 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

5678910111213

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
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,461 ha in 2016, 7,064 ha in 2017, 4,870 ha in 2018, 4,632 ha in 2019, 4,774 ha in 2020, 2,887 ha in 2021, 6,364 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,489 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandoa where it started
    11,022 ha reached on 3 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)
3 Jul 29.7 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Jul 30.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Jul 30.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Jul 30.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Jul 29.9 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Jul 29.2 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jul 30.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jul 31.3 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jul 29.4 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Jul 29.2 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jul after 30.7 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Jul after 31.1 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul after 31.3 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul after 32.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Jul after 31.2 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Jul after 31.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jul after 31.8 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jul after 32.8 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jul after 32.3 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul after 33.0 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul after 32.2 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Jul after 31.8 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jul after 32.3 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 32.9 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jul after 32.7 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jul after 32.6 °C 15 % 27 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 · 28 Jun 2023
After · 19 Jul 2023

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 · 368Every 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 5 July 2023 and 12 July 2023: 8 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 10,967 hectares (109.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (11,022 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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.