How long did the Yakoma fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 January 2020 to 5 February 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2020 to 30 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,744 hectares (57.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yakoma (5,784 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2020-01-16 → 2020-02-05

Yakoma fire, January 2020 Yakoma

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2020, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 16 January 2020 in Yakoma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,744 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Nord-Ubangi since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 122 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yakoma · 2018 Yakoma · 2020 Yakoma · 2018 Yakoma · 2026

Burnt area: 5,744ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 16 Jan 2020 – 5 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 16 Jan; 2020
Heat detections: 252; in a single hotspot: 171 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 191MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jan5 Feb

Play back 5 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jan 22 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan 28 Jan 31 Jan 3 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

36km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,983 ha in 2016, 3,011 ha in 2017, 2,256 ha in 2018, 295 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,113 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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

Yakoma where it started

5,784 ha reached on 16 Jan

0.4 %

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 2020

Built-up area2.8 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
16 Jan	37.8 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Jan	34.9 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Jan	34.8 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Jan	33.3 °C	33 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Jan	35.4 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
21 Jan	36.3 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Jan	36.3 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Jan	34.9 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Jan	34.5 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Jan	35.2 °C	14 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Jan	36.0 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Jan	37.2 °C	16 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Jan	37.1 °C	20 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Jan	37.5 °C	17 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Jan	36.8 °C	20 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Jan	32.2 °C	37 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 Feb	34.6 °C	34 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	High 24
2 Feb	34.4 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Feb	34.5 °C	35 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Feb	34.7 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Feb	33.3 °C	41 %	28 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 21
6 Feb after	33.6 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
7 Feb after	36.8 °C	27 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Feb after	38.3 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Feb after	36.8 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Feb after	36.6 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Feb after	37.0 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
12 Feb after	35.9 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
13 Feb after	36.6 °C	13 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Feb after	38.3 °C	12 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
15 Feb after	38.3 °C	15 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Jan 2020

After · 12 Feb 2020

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 · 252Every 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yakoma fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 January 2020 to 5 February 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2020 to 30 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,744 hectares (57.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yakoma (5,784 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 30 January 2020 → 5 February 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 22 January 2020 → 16 January 2020.

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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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 22 January 2020 to 30 January 2020. 252 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned