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Feshi fire, 2 June 2022 Feshi

Out · last detection 12 Jun 2022, 00:11 UTC

The fire started on 2 June 2022 in Feshi, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,466 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 31th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 8 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2022, of 106.

Burnt area
13,466ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
2 Jun 2022 – 11 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
2 Jun
2022
Heat detections
487
in a single hotspot: 245 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
16.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jun 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jun11 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

23456789101112

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
41km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 21 Jun.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 988 ha in 2016, 9,180 ha in 2017, 5,751 ha in 2018, 7,017 ha in 2019, 1,562 ha in 2020, 7,456 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,517 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Feshi where it started
    13,556 ha reached on 28 May
    0.7 %

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)
28 May 30.2 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
29 May 29.5 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
30 May 30.3 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 May 30.7 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Jun 30.7 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Jun 30.8 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jun 31.2 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jun 31.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Jun 31.8 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jun 31.1 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jun 30.2 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jun 30.6 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jun 30.6 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Jun 30.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Jun 31.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jun after 31.2 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Jun after 31.4 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jun after 29.4 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jun after 31.5 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Jun after 30.3 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Jun after 31.6 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Jun after 29.2 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jun after 29.2 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Jun after 29.0 °C 41 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
21 Jun after 29.0 °C 44 % 24 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 May 2022
After · 18 Jun 2022

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 · 487Every 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 Feshi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 June 2022 and 11 June 2022: 10 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 13,466 hectares (134.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Feshi (13,556 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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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.