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Kahemba fire, 6 July 2018 Kahemba

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2018, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 6 July 2018 in Kahemba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,755 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 78th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 220 with a page). Number 32 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kahemba · 2017Kahemba · 2016Kahemba · 2026Kahemba · 2026

Burnt area
7,755ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
6 Jul 2018 – 31 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
6 Jul
2018
Heat detections
233
in a single hotspot: 203 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
266MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jul 2018 · 1,284 MW · 16 7 Jul 2018 · 6 MW · 1 9 Jul 2018 · 10 MW · 2 11 Jul 2018 · 10 MW · 1 13 Jul 2018 · 68 MW · 4 14 Jul 2018 · 76 MW · 7 15 Jul 2018 · 4 MW · 1 16 Jul 2018 · 365 MW · 36 17 Jul 2018 · 821 MW · 20 18 Jul 2018 · 1,333 MW · 60 19 Jul 2018 · 30 MW · 7 20 Jul 2018 · 150 MW · 17 21 Jul 2018 · 281 MW · 7 23 Jul 2018 · 213 MW · 15 24 Jul 2018 · 17 MW · 4 25 Jul 2018 · 68 MW · 5 26 Jul 2018 · 195 MW · 12 27 Jul 2018 · 138 MW · 6 28 Jul 2018 · 40 MW · 7 31 Jul 2018 · 211 MW · 5
6 Jul 11 Jul 15 Jul 18 Jul 21 Jul 25 Jul 28 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

31°high
52km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 850 ha in 2016, 4,868 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,893 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (78 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. Kahemba where it started
    7,813 ha reached on 6 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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
13 Jul 30.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul 30.3 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jul 30.6 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Jul 30.1 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jul 29.6 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Jul 29.0 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul 30.1 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jul 30.1 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Jul 30.9 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul 30.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jul 31.4 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jul 30.0 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Jul 29.0 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Jul 30.2 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Jul 29.3 °C 21 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Jul 30.2 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 29.0 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul 30.5 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 29.8 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 28.6 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Aug after 30.0 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Aug after 31.1 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug after 30.9 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2018
After · 7 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 · 233Every 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 Kahemba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 July 2018 to 31 July 2018 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 July 2018 to 25 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,755 hectares (77.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kahemba (7,813 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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: 25 July 2018 → 31 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 13 July 2018 → 6 July 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 13 July 2018 to 25 July 2018. 233 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.