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

Kahemba fire, July 2022 Kahemba

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2022, 12:12 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2022 in Kahemba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,341 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 113th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 56 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kahemba · 2017Kasongo-Lunda · 2026Kahemba · 2026Kahemba · 2026

Burnt area
6,341ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
8 Jul 2022 – 15 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
8 Jul
2022
Heat detections
204
in a single hotspot: 337 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul15 Jul
16 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2022 · 5,749 MW · 46 9 Jul 2022 · 317 MW · 14 10 Jul 2022 · 3 MW · 1 11 Jul 2022 · 10 MW · 2 12 Jul 2022 · 7 MW · 1 13 Jul 2022 · 2,749 MW · 82 14 Jul 2022 · 8 MW · 4 15 Jul 2022 · 216 MW · 14 16 Jul 2022 · 20 MW · 4
8 Jul 10 Jul 12 Jul 14 Jul 16 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
41km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,241 ha in 2016, 2,207 ha in 2017, 3,024 ha in 2018, 3,354 ha in 2019, 601 ha in 2020, 2,072 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,634 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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
    6,383 ha reached on 1 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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.06 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
8 Jul 30.0 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jul 31.0 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Jul 31.5 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jul 30.1 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Jul 30.2 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Jul 30.4 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul 30.8 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul 30.8 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul after 30.1 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul after 30.6 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul after 30.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul after 29.9 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Jul after 28.3 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul after 28.3 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul after 29.4 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Jul after 30.4 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul after 31.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul after 31.6 °C 19 % 35 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 · 1 Jul 2022
After · 22 Jul 2022

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 · 204Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 July 2022 and 15 July 2022: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,341 hectares (63.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kahemba (6,383 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 204 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.