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Kabambare fire, June 2018 Kabambare

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2018, 10:56 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2018 in Kabambare, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,446 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Maniema since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 62 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabambare · 2023Kasongo · 2021

Burnt area
6,446ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
29 Jun 2018 – 25 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
29 Jun
2018
Heat detections
448
in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
161MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun25 Jul
25 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jun 2018 · 15 MW · 2 30 Jun 2018 · 4 MW · 1 1 Jul 2018 · 214 MW · 21 2 Jul 2018 · 13 MW · 3 3 Jul 2018 · 96 MW · 9 5 Jul 2018 · 121 MW · 22 6 Jul 2018 · 404 MW · 33 7 Jul 2018 · 341 MW · 36 8 Jul 2018 · 290 MW · 27 9 Jul 2018 · 272 MW · 18 10 Jul 2018 · 137 MW · 19 11 Jul 2018 · 168 MW · 19 12 Jul 2018 · 119 MW · 17 13 Jul 2018 · 230 MW · 15 14 Jul 2018 · 100 MW · 8 15 Jul 2018 · 110 MW · 16 16 Jul 2018 · 132 MW · 19 17 Jul 2018 · 259 MW · 30 18 Jul 2018 · 210 MW · 16 19 Jul 2018 · 26 MW · 4 20 Jul 2018 · 53 MW · 9 21 Jul 2018 · 17 MW · 7 22 Jul 2018 · 37 MW · 7 23 Jul 2018 · 455 MW · 51 24 Jul 2018 · 338 MW · 34 25 Jul 2018 · 20 MW · 5
29 Jun 3 Jul 8 Jul 12 Jul 16 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 24 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
45km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 29 Jul.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 613 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% 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. Kabambare where it started
    6,486 ha reached on 29 Jun
    0.3 %

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)
5 Jul 33.2 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Jul 33.3 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Jul 33.6 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Jul 33.7 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Jul 35.0 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jul 35.2 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Jul 35.6 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Jul 35.6 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jul 34.6 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Jul 35.3 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jul 36.1 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul 34.0 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 34.2 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul 34.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jul 33.8 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jul 35.0 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul 35.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jul 35.6 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul 35.6 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jul 35.1 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jul 35.1 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul after 29.3 °C 44 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Jul after 30.2 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Jul after 32.1 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Jul after 33.1 °C 40 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jun 2018
After · 1 Aug 2018

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 · 448Every 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 Kabambare fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 June 2018 to 25 July 2018 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 July 2018 to 24 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,446 hectares (64.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabambare (6,486 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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: 24 July 2018 → 25 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 5 July 2018 → 29 June 2018.

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 5 July 2018 to 24 July 2018. 448 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.