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Kabalo fire, 5 June 2017 Kabalo

Out · last detection 14 Jun 2017, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 5 June 2017 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,772 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 15 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabalo · 2022Kabalo · 2018Kabalo · 2021Kongolo · 2018

Burnt area
11,772ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
5 Jun 2017 – 14 Jun 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
5 Jun
2017
Heat detections
280
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
258MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jun14 Jun
14 Jun 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jun 2017 · 64 MW · 17 6 Jun 2017 · 71 MW · 15 7 Jun 2017 · 814 MW · 60 8 Jun 2017 · 116 MW · 21 9 Jun 2017 · 37 MW · 16 10 Jun 2017 · 580 MW · 52 11 Jun 2017 · 594 MW · 53 12 Jun 2017 · 123 MW · 28 13 Jun 2017 · 178 MW · 17 14 Jun 2017 · 5 MW · 1
5 Jun 7 Jun 9 Jun 11 Jun 13 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
45km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.4% of the area of London (118 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

  1. Kabalo where it started
    11,846 ha
    0.8 %

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 2015
Built-up area2.1 ha
Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.1 hectares of built-up land and about 500 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
5 Jun 35.2 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Jun 34.6 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Jun 35.0 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Jun 34.7 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Jun 34.9 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jun 35.1 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Jun 35.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jun 34.7 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jun 34.3 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jun 33.4 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jun after 33.4 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jun after 34.6 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jun after 34.6 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Jun after 31.9 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jun after 34.1 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Jun after 34.7 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jun after 33.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jun after 33.6 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jun after 34.5 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jun after 34.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 May 2017
After · 21 Jun 2017

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 · 0Every 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabalo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 June 2017 and 14 June 2017: 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 11,772 hectares (117.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabalo (11,846 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

History of this page · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 June 2017 → 14 June 2017.
  2. Start date: 29 May 2017 → 5 June 2017.
  3. Last day with fire: 14 June 2017 → 20 June 2017.
  4. Start date: 5 June 2017 → 29 May 2017.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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.