How long did the Sibiti fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2018 to 10 September 2018 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2018 to 7 September 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,566 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sibiti (1,576 ha, 0.2 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). It is not an official report.

CG · Republic of the Congo · 5 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018

Sibiti fire, 5 September 2018 Sibiti

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2018, 12:57 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2018 in Sibiti, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,566 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Lékoumou since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 13 in Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sibiti · 2017 Mouyondzi · 2026 Mouyondzi · 2026 Mouyondzi · 2026

Burnt area: 1,566ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 5 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 5 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 33; in a single hotspot: 93 MW
Average daily power: 204MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept10 Sept

Play back 10 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept

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

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 183 ha in 2017.

183 ha Sibiti fire, September 2017 1,020 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (16 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

Sibiti where it started

1,576 ha reached on 5 Sept

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Aug 2018

After · 17 Sept 2018

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.

Detections table · 33Every 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 Republic of the Congo

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sibiti fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2018 to 10 September 2018 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2018 to 7 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,566 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sibiti (1,576 ha, 0.2 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). 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 ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 7 September 2018 → 10 September 2018.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2018 to 7 September 2018. 33 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (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.

Where it burned