Skip to content
worldfires
en
CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · →

Kabambare fire, July 2023 Kabambare

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2023, 11:48 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2023 in Kabambare, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,208 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Maniema since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 66 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023, of 76.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabambare · 2018Kasongo · 2021

Burnt area
5,208ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
7 Jul 2023 – 31 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
7 Jul
2023
Heat detections
250
in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
121MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jul 2023 · 6 MW · 2 8 Jul 2023 · 83 MW · 13 9 Jul 2023 · 18 MW · 3 10 Jul 2023 · 10 MW · 2 13 Jul 2023 · 82 MW · 7 14 Jul 2023 · 79 MW · 5 15 Jul 2023 · 376 MW · 37 16 Jul 2023 · 183 MW · 18 17 Jul 2023 · 315 MW · 23 18 Jul 2023 · 64 MW · 11 19 Jul 2023 · 129 MW · 21 20 Jul 2023 · 124 MW · 8 21 Jul 2023 · 117 MW · 12 22 Jul 2023 · 556 MW · 46 24 Jul 2023 · 109 MW · 15 25 Jul 2023 · 69 MW · 9 28 Jul 2023 · 24 MW · 6 29 Jul 2023 · 38 MW · 6 30 Jul 2023 · 4 MW · 1 31 Jul 2023 · 28 MW · 5
7 Jul 10 Jul 15 Jul 18 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 25 Jul 30 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
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,339 ha in 2016, 3,421 ha in 2018, 62 ha in 2020, 792 ha in 2021, 2,055 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,601 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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
    5,241 ha reached on 7 Jul
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area4.7 ha
Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.7 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Jul 34.3 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul 35.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul 35.5 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jul 36.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jul 35.4 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jul 36.1 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jul 35.5 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul 34.3 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 34.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul 35.3 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul 35.8 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jul 35.0 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Jul 35.9 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul 35.9 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jul 35.1 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Jul 35.6 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul 35.2 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul 36.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Jul 35.7 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 35.7 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Aug after 33.2 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Aug after 33.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2023
After · 7 Aug 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10104 µg/m³
Optical depth1.38
1112131415161718192021222324252627
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 250Every 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 7 July 2023 to 31 July 2023 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 July 2023 to 24 July 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,208 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabambare (5,241 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 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: 24 July 2023 → 31 July 2023.
  2. Start date: 13 July 2023 → 7 July 2023.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 13 July 2023 to 24 July 2023. 250 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 2025, 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.