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Kabalo fire, 17 July 2021 Kabalo, Kongolo

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2021, 11:34 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2021 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,945 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 100th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 43 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021, of 97.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kongolo · 2018Kongolo · 2020Kabalo · 2022Kabalo · 2021

Burnt area
6,945ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
17 Jul 2021 – 31 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
17 Jul
2021
Heat detections
242
in a single hotspot: 432 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
500MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2021 · 2 MW · 2 18 Jul 2021 · 103 MW · 33 19 Jul 2021 · 4,837 MW · 76 20 Jul 2021 · 720 MW · 52 22 Jul 2021 · 22 MW · 3 23 Jul 2021 · 246 MW · 26 24 Jul 2021 · 153 MW · 13 25 Jul 2021 · 35 MW · 9 26 Jul 2021 · 53 MW · 9 27 Jul 2021 · 30 MW · 7 28 Jul 2021 · 268 MW · 6 30 Jul 2021 · 6 MW · 1 31 Jul 2021 · 20 MW · 5
17 Jul 19 Jul 22 Jul 24 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 31 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

35°high
49km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,419 ha in 2016, 2,995 ha in 2017, 4,039 ha in 2018, 1,245 ha in 2019, 2,191 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,271 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (69 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
    6,687 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.4 %
  2. Kongolo
    300 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
17 Jul 33.3 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul 32.6 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul 33.9 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Jul 34.5 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jul 35.3 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 35.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul 34.7 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Jul 34.6 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Jul 32.2 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jul 31.3 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jul 32.1 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jul 33.8 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jul 34.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul 35.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul 34.0 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Aug after 33.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Aug after 33.8 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Aug after 34.5 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug after 35.3 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Aug after 35.9 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug after 36.0 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug after 33.7 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 33.3 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug after 33.0 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
10 Aug after 32.2 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2021
After · 7 Aug 2021

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 · 242Every 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 17 July 2021 to 31 July 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 July 2021 to 24 July 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,945 hectares (69.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kabalo (6,687 ha, 0.4 %); Kongolo (300 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 July 2021 → 31 July 2021.

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 17 July 2021 to 24 July 2021. 242 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.