How long did the Kamina fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 August 2019 and 19 August 2019: 6 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 5,480 hectares (54.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kamina (5,531 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2019-08-14 → 2019-08-19

Kamina fire, 14 August 2019 Kamina

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2019, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2019 in Kamina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,480 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 132th largest in Haut-Lomami since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 99 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamina · 2023 Kamina · 2024 Kamina · 2026 Kamina · 2016

Burnt area: 5,480ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 14 Aug 2019 – 19 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 14 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 133; in a single hotspot: 234 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug19 Aug

Play back 19 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 19 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

43km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 189 ha in 2016, 2,474 ha in 2017, 1,549 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,260 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

Kamina where it started

5,531 ha reached on 15 Aug

0.1 %

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.

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)
14 Aug	34.2 °C	12 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
15 Aug	31.6 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
16 Aug	30.4 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
17 Aug	31.5 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Aug	33.0 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Aug	32.4 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Aug after	31.9 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Aug after	31.3 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Aug after	31.5 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
23 Aug after	31.2 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Aug after	32.0 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Aug after	33.2 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Aug after	30.4 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Aug after	32.0 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Aug after	33.0 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
29 Aug after	31.7 °C	34 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Aug 2019

After · 26 Aug 2019

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 · 133Every 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 Kamina fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 August 2019 and 19 August 2019: 6 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 5,480 hectares (54.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kamina (5,531 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 133 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.

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