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Kabalo fire, 19 July 2021 Kabalo, Manono

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2021, 11:21 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2021 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,992 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 72th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 31 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021, of 97.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabalo · 2019Kabalo · 2017Kabalo · 2019Kabalo · 2019

Burnt area
7,992ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
19 Jul 2021 – 6 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
19 Jul
2021
Heat detections
301
in a single hotspot: 296 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
373MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul6 Aug
6 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 2021 · 556 MW · 12 21 Jul 2021 · 437 MW · 13 22 Jul 2021 · 6 MW · 1 24 Jul 2021 · 4 MW · 1 26 Jul 2021 · 284 MW · 27 27 Jul 2021 · 296 MW · 49 28 Jul 2021 · 2,595 MW · 91 29 Jul 2021 · 78 MW · 10 30 Jul 2021 · 343 MW · 46 31 Jul 2021 · 294 MW · 18 1 Aug 2021 · 129 MW · 12 2 Aug 2021 · 4 MW · 1 3 Aug 2021 · 169 MW · 17 6 Aug 2021 · 32 MW · 3
19 Jul 22 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 3 Aug

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
49km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,782 ha in 2016, 5,340 ha in 2017, 4,538 ha in 2018, 3,725 ha in 2019, 924 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,366 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (80 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
    4,777 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.3 %
  2. Manono
    3,266 ha reached on 22 Jul
    0.1 %

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 area0.43 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.43 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
19 Jul 32.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jul 33.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jul 33.8 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jul 33.5 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jul 33.2 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jul 32.6 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jul 30.9 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Jul 29.7 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Jul 30.3 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul 32.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jul 33.2 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul 33.7 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul 32.1 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Aug 32.0 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Aug 32.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Aug 33.5 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug 33.9 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Aug 34.2 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug 34.5 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Aug after 32.0 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Aug after 32.4 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug after 31.9 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 31.5 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Aug after 32.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Aug after 33.7 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug after 31.5 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
14 Aug after 31.1 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Aug after 33.9 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Aug after 34.0 °C 22 % 42 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 · 12 Jul 2021
After · 13 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 · 301Every 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 19 July 2021 to 6 August 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 July 2021 to 31 July 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,992 hectares (79.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kabalo (4,777 ha, 0.3 %); Manono (3,266 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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: 31 July 2021 → 6 August 2021.
  2. Start date: 24 July 2021 → 19 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 24 July 2021 to 31 July 2021. 301 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.