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Kabalo fire, 29 June 2022 Kabalo

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2022, 11:34 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2022 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,612 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 3 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabalo · 2018Kabalo · 2016Kabalo · 2019Kabalo · 2021

Burnt area
22,612ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
29 Jun 2022 – 18 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 Jun
2022
Heat detections
871
in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun18 Jul
18 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jun 2022 · 52 MW · 6 30 Jun 2022 · 138 MW · 24 1 Jul 2022 · 150 MW · 33 2 Jul 2022 · 491 MW · 58 3 Jul 2022 · 229 MW · 31 4 Jul 2022 · 4,822 MW · 124 5 Jul 2022 · 680 MW · 50 6 Jul 2022 · 3,690 MW · 100 7 Jul 2022 · 5,227 MW · 149 8 Jul 2022 · 653 MW · 38 9 Jul 2022 · 4,496 MW · 130 10 Jul 2022 · 37 MW · 10 11 Jul 2022 · 335 MW · 41 12 Jul 2022 · 14 MW · 3 13 Jul 2022 · 163 MW · 16 14 Jul 2022 · 197 MW · 33 15 Jul 2022 · 101 MW · 12 16 Jul 2022 · 11 MW · 1 18 Jul 2022 · 235 MW · 12
29 Jun 2 Jul 5 Jul 7 Jul 8 Jul 11 Jul 14 Jul 18 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

36°high
42km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,043 ha in 2016, 8,395 ha in 2017, 13,266 ha in 2018, 11,968 ha in 2019, 10,873 ha in 2020, 10,813 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 22,293 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (226 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
    22,755 ha reached on 29 Jun
    1.6 %

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 area2.7 ha
Residents≈ 750

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 750 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)
29 Jun 32.1 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jun 33.7 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Jul 33.6 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Jul 34.5 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Jul 34.7 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Jul 34.0 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Jul 34.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jul 33.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jul 34.0 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jul 34.3 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jul 33.7 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jul 34.6 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jul 34.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Jul 33.9 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul 34.1 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jul 34.8 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jul 35.6 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Jul 35.0 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul 33.7 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jul 34.2 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Jul after 33.9 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Jul after 34.9 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jul after 34.5 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Jul after 35.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jul after 35.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Jul after 35.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jul after 35.1 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 35.5 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jul after 35.0 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul after 33.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jun 2022
After · 25 Jul 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 · 871Every 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 29 June 2022 to 18 July 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 June 2022 to 11 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 22,612 hectares (226.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabalo (22,755 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 42 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: 11 July 2022 → 18 July 2022.
  2. Start date: 30 June 2022 → 29 June 2022.

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 30 June 2022 to 11 July 2022. 871 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.