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Sandoa fire, 10 July 2023 Sandoa

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2023, 23:55 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2023 in Sandoa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,481 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 26 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023, of 76.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sandoa · 2022Sandoa · 2022Sandoa · 2026Sandoa · 2026

Burnt area
7,481ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
10 Jul 2023 – 17 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
10 Jul
2023
Heat detections
219
in a single hotspot: 472 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul17 Jul
17 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 2023 · 675 MW · 25 11 Jul 2023 · 1,807 MW · 35 12 Jul 2023 · 251 MW · 40 13 Jul 2023 · 19 MW · 4 14 Jul 2023 · 1,987 MW · 23 15 Jul 2023 · 1,225 MW · 31 17 Jul 2023 · 6,840 MW · 59
10 Jul 11 Jul 12 Jul 13 Jul 14 Jul 15 Jul 17 Jul

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
47km/h · peak gust
14%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: 2,682 ha in 2016, 2,643 ha in 2017, 154 ha in 2018, 4,632 ha in 2019, 3,058 ha in 2020, 1,119 ha in 2021, 4,219 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,875 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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. Sandoa where it started
    7,394 ha reached on 10 Jul
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.30 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.30 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
10 Jul 31.0 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jul 28.5 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jul 28.8 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jul 30.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jul 30.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul 31.1 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul 31.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jul 30.6 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jul after 31.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul after 31.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Jul after 32.6 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jul after 32.2 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul after 32.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul after 31.8 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jul after 31.5 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jul after 32.0 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 32.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jul after 32.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2023
After · 24 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 8 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 53: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10119 µg/m³
Optical depth1.11
891011121314151617181920
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 219Every 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 Sandoa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 July 2023 and 17 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 7,481 hectares (74.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (7,394 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 219 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.