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Sandoa fire, June 2026 Sandoa

Out · last detection 3 Jul 2026, 11:32 UTC

The fire started on 16 June 2026 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,735 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 38th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 320 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
6,735ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
16 Jun 2026 – 2 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
16 Jun
2026
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

3 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jun2 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

16171820212223242627282930123

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
33km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,187 ha in 2016, 3,279 ha in 2017, 1,551 ha in 2018, 2,584 ha in 2019, 680 ha in 2022, 1,185 ha in 2023, 956 ha in 2024, 1,149 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,679 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandoa where it started
    6,769 ha reached on 9 Jun
    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)
16 Jun 31.2 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jun 30.9 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jun 30.6 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jun 29.2 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Jun 30.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Jun 30.8 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Jun 30.2 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jun 29.5 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jun 29.3 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Jun 29.7 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Jun 30.4 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jun 30.1 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jun 29.5 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jun 30.1 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jun 30.8 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Jul 31.2 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jul 31.2 °C 21 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Jul after 31.3 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Jul after 30.5 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jul after 30.2 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Jul after 29.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jul after 29.5 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Jul after 29.8 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Jul after 29.7 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jul after 30.8 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Jul after 30.7 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Jul after 31.2 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jun 2026
After · 9 Jul 2026

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 19 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³
Days over the guideline22 days
PM10112 µg/m³
Optical depth0.94
141516171819202122232425262728293012345
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 · 198Every 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 16 June 2026 and 2 July 2026: 17 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 6,735 hectares (67.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sandoa (6,769 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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.