Sembé fire, August 2024 Sembé
The fire started on 24 August 2024 in Sembé, Congo - Brazzaville, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 132th largest in Bouenza since 2016 (of 180 with a page). Number 67 in Congo - Brazzaville in 2024, of 103.
- Burnt area
- 1,133ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 24 Aug 2024 – 27 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 24 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 28
- in a single hotspot: 132 MW
- Energy released
- 509MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 439 ha in 2021.
What happened to each town
-
Sembé where it started1,141 ha reached on 18 Aug3.3 %
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 27 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 28Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,186 haLuozi20 September 2026 · 6 days · 19 km away
- 7,049 haImpfondo20 August 2026 · 27 days · 22 km away
- 5,339 haLuozi20 September 2026 · 6 days · 26 km away
- 4,188 haImpfondo17 August 2026 · 11 days · 35 km away
- 7,494 haImpfondo1 September 2026 · 15 days · 40 km away
- 6,651 haImpfondo2 September 2026 · 13 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sembé fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 August 2024 and 27 August 2024: 4 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 1,133 hectares (11.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sembé (1,141 ha, 3.3 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Brazzaville (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.
Report an error
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 (Public Domain). 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.