How long did the Kabinda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2025 to 8 August 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2025 to 6 August 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,576 hectares (55.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kabinda (5,619 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2025-07-20 → 2025-08-08

Kabinda fire, July 2025 Kabinda

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2025, 12:32 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2025 in Kabinda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,576 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Lomami since 2016 (of 66 with a page). Number 98 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 118.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kabinda · 2020 Kabinda · 2026 Ngandajika · 2026 Ngandajika · 2020

Burnt area: 5,576ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 20 Jul 2025 – 8 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 20 Jul; 2025
Heat detections: 398; in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 262MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul8 Aug

Play back 8 Aug 2025

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 24 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul 2 Aug 5 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

45km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,253 ha in 2016, 1,773 ha in 2017, 2,152 ha in 2018, 463 ha in 2019, 4,085 ha in 2020, 1,223 ha in 2021, 5,201 ha in 2022, 2,655 ha in 2023, 5,523 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,318 ha that had burned before.

3,074 ha Kabinda fire, July 2020 5,628 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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

Kabinda where it started

5,619 ha reached on 20 Jul

0.4 %

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 area1.1 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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)
25 Jul	32.2 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Jul	32.9 °C	31 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Jul	33.0 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Jul	32.0 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Jul	31.2 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Jul	31.2 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Jul	32.4 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Aug	32.6 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Aug	33.6 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Aug	32.4 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Aug	32.5 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Aug	33.0 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
6 Aug	32.3 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Aug	30.9 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Aug	30.8 °C	35 %	20 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
9 Aug after	32.0 °C	35 %	18 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
10 Aug after	30.5 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
11 Aug after	31.0 °C	41 %	29 km/h	0.7 mm	High 23
12 Aug after	31.9 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Aug after	32.7 °C	23 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Aug after	32.7 °C	23 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Aug after	32.8 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Aug after	28.7 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jul 2025

After · 15 Aug 2025

Before After

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 6 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 70: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM1091 µg/m³

Optical depth1.51

WHO 15

232425262728293031123456789

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 · 398Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabinda fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2025 to 8 August 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2025 to 6 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,576 hectares (55.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kabinda (5,619 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 6 August 2025 → 8 August 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 25 July 2025 → 20 July 2025.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 25 July 2025 to 6 August 2025. 398 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.

Where it burned