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

Kamina fire, 22 July 2019 Kamina, Bukama

Out · last detection 28 Jul 2019, 00:00 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2019 in Kamina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,289 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 26th largest in Haut-Lomami since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 19 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamina · 2016Kamina · 2026Bukama · 2022Kamina · 2026

Burnt area
10,289ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
22 Jul 2019 – 28 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
22 Jul
2019
Heat detections
265
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
398MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul28 Jul
28 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2019 · 34 MW · 14 23 Jul 2019 · 59 MW · 9 24 Jul 2019 · 303 MW · 53 25 Jul 2019 · 2,048 MW · 138 26 Jul 2019 · 172 MW · 21 27 Jul 2019 · 153 MW · 17 28 Jul 2019 · 16 MW · 7
22 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 25 Jul 26 Jul 27 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
38km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,689 ha in 2016, 1,561 ha in 2017, 1,477 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,612 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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. Kamina where it started
    10,327 ha reached on 22 Jul
    0.2 %
  2. Bukama
    25 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.41 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
22 Jul 29.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jul 30.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jul 30.5 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jul 31.0 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul 30.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jul 29.5 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jul 29.2 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jul after 30.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jul after 30.5 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul after 31.6 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 31.3 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug after 30.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Aug after 29.6 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
4 Aug after 31.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
5 Aug after 33.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Aug after 32.3 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug after 34.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Aug after 30.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Aug after 31.3 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2019
After · 4 Aug 2019

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 · 265Every 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 Kamina fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 July 2019 and 28 July 2019: 7 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 10,289 hectares (102.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kamina (10,327 ha, 0.2 %); Bukama (25 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 38 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

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. 265 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.