How long did the Sandoa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 August 2026 and 8 August 2026: 5 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 5,621 hectares (56.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sandoa (4,956 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

CD · Congo - Kinshasa · 2026-08-04 → 2026-08-08

Sandoa fire, 4 August 2026 Sandoa

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2026, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2026 in Sandoa, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,621 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 68th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 422 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area: 5,621ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 4 Aug 2026 – 8 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 4 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 108; in a single hotspot: 225 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 2.3GW; sum of detected power

Play back 8 Aug 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug8 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

578

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

36km/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: 1,040 ha in 2016, 213 ha in 2017, 1,443 ha in 2018, 533 ha in 2019, 1,382 ha in 2020, 1,133 ha in 2021, 2,912 ha in 2022, 1,283 ha in 2023, 1,342 ha in 2024, 1,227 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,177 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Sandoa where it started

4,956 ha reached on 5 Aug

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)
4 Aug	32.5 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Aug	32.7 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Aug	32.7 °C	15 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
7 Aug	32.6 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Aug	32.1 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
9 Aug after	31.8 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Aug after	33.1 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
11 Aug after	33.1 °C	20 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Aug after	31.9 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.7 mm	High 31
13 Aug after	33.1 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Aug after	32.8 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Aug after	32.5 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Aug after	32.2 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Aug after	32.1 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Aug after	32.7 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Aug after	33.3 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
20 Aug after	32.2 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
21 Aug after	31.1 °C	26 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jul 2026

After · 15 Aug 2026

Before After

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 6 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 132 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak132 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM10136 µg/m³

Optical depth1.68

WHO 15

234567891011121314

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 · 108Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sandoa fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 August 2026 and 8 August 2026: 5 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 5,621 hectares (56.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sandoa (4,956 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

Where it burned