How long did the Kahemba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 June 2017 to 11 July 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 June 2017 to 5 July 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,827 hectares (108.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kahemba (10,906 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 2017-06-19 → 2017-07-11

Kahemba fire, 19 June 2017 Kahemba

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2017, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 19 June 2017 in Kahemba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,827 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 40th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 20 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kahemba · 2016 Kahemba · 2026 Kahemba · 2026 Kahemba · 2026

Burnt area: 10,827ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 19 Jun 2017 – 11 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 19 Jun; 2017
Heat detections: 387; in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 361MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jun11 Jul

Play back 11 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jun 22 Jun 25 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 1 Jul 4 Jul 7 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

32°high

50km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,260 ha in 2016.

558 ha Kahemba fire, June 2016 5,610 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (108 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

Kahemba where it started

10,906 ha reached on 19 Jun

0.6 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.80 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.80 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2015, 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 Jun	31.0 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jun	30.7 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Jun	30.6 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
22 Jun	31.4 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
23 Jun	30.2 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Jun	31.1 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Jun	31.2 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Jun	31.0 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Jun	32.3 °C	19 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 Jun	31.1 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Jun	30.3 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
30 Jun	31.3 °C	19 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
1 Jul	31.9 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
2 Jul	31.7 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Jul	31.0 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
4 Jul	31.1 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
5 Jul	30.6 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Jul	30.4 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Jul	30.4 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Jul	30.2 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Jul	31.5 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Jul	31.1 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Jul	30.0 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
12 Jul after	28.6 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
13 Jul after	30.1 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Jul after	29.2 °C	26 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Jul after	29.5 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Jul after	29.0 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 Jul after	31.7 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Jul after	31.4 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Jul after	31.4 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Jul after	31.7 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Jul after	31.3 °C	16 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Jun 2017

After · 18 Jul 2017

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.

Detections table · 387Every 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 Kahemba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 June 2017 to 11 July 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 June 2017 to 5 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,827 hectares (108.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kahemba (10,906 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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?

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 June 2017 to 5 July 2017. 387 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 2015, 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