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Kabalo fire, June 2020 Kabalo

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2020, 11:52 UTC

The fire started on 28 June 2020 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,399 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 123th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 98 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabalo · 2019Kabalo · 2017Kabalo · 2026Manono · 2017

Burnt area
6,399ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
28 Jun 2020 – 11 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
28 Jun
2020
Heat detections
190
in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
357MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jun11 Jul
11 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2020 · 282 MW · 13 2 Jul 2020 · 227 MW · 27 3 Jul 2020 · 2,700 MW · 86 4 Jul 2020 · 175 MW · 31 5 Jul 2020 · 73 MW · 14 6 Jul 2020 · 68 MW · 9 7 Jul 2020 · 10 MW · 1 9 Jul 2020 · 7 MW · 2 10 Jul 2020 · 21 MW · 4 11 Jul 2020 · 11 MW · 3
1 Jul 3 Jul 5 Jul 7 Jul 10 Jul

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
39km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,785 ha in 2016, 2,910 ha in 2017, 1,483 ha in 2018, 4,577 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,051 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 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
    6,446 ha reached on 1 Jul
    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.

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)
1 Jul 32.7 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Jul 33.4 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Jul 33.7 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jul 33.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Jul 32.8 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul 32.7 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Jul 33.0 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jul 33.9 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Jul 34.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jul 33.5 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jul 33.9 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jul after 34.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jul after 33.9 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jul after 34.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Jul after 33.9 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Jul after 33.6 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul after 30.0 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jun 2020
After · 18 Jul 2020

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 · 190Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 June 2020 to 11 July 2020 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2020 to 7 July 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,399 hectares (64.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabalo (6,446 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 7 July 2020 → 11 July 2020.
  2. Start date: 1 July 2020 → 28 June 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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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 1 July 2020 to 7 July 2020. 190 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.

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.