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Feshi fire, 3 June 2022 Feshi

Out · last detection 13 Jun 2022, 12:30 UTC

The fire started on 3 June 2022 in Feshi, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,780 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 75th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 35 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2022, of 106.

Burnt area
7,780ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
3 Jun 2022 – 12 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
3 Jun
2022
Heat detections
214
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Jun 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jun12 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

345678910111213

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 22 Jun.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 434 ha in 2016, 2 ha in 2017, 2,235 ha in 2018, 2,288 ha in 2019, 1,004 ha in 2020, 2,162 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,049 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Feshi where it started
    7,831 ha reached on 1 Jun
    0.4 %

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)
3 Jun 33.5 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Jun 34.1 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jun 34.1 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jun 33.2 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jun 32.4 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jun 32.6 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Jun 32.6 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jun 32.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jun 33.4 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Jun 33.2 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Jun after 33.1 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jun after 31.3 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jun after 33.0 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Jun after 32.0 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jun after 33.4 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jun after 31.0 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jun after 30.8 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jun after 30.5 °C 37 % 21 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
21 Jun after 31.0 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
22 Jun after 28.1 °C 51 % 31 km/h 4.1 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 May 2022
After · 19 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 · 214Every 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 3 June 2022 and 12 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 7,780 hectares (77.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Feshi (7,831 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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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.