Skip to content
worldfires
CD · Congo - Kinshasa · →

Kamina fire, 2 August 2026 Kamina

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2026, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 2 August 2026 in Kamina, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,140 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in Haut-Lomami since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 242 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
8,140ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
2 Aug 2026 – 8 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
2 Aug
2026
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 334 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Energy released
9.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Aug8 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

25678

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
39km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,452 ha in 2016, 2,507 ha in 2017, 980 ha in 2018, 3,791 ha in 2019, 1,556 ha in 2020, 2,176 ha in 2021, 371 ha in 2022, 2,181 ha in 2023, 2,458 ha in 2024, 3,334 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,717 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kamina where it started
    8,187 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
31 Jul 30.6 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 29.4 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug 30.2 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Aug 30.6 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Aug 30.9 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug 31.2 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Aug 31.7 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Aug 30.7 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Aug 31.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug after 29.8 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
10 Aug after 30.6 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Aug after 29.5 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Aug after 31.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Aug after 31.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Aug after 31.0 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug after 30.4 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Aug after 30.5 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Aug after 30.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Aug after 31.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug after 31.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Aug after 31.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Aug after 30.7 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jul 2026
After · 15 Aug 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 29 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 140 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 99: 6.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak140 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10143 µg/m³
Optical depth2.02
2930311234567891011121314
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 157Every 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 Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kamina fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 August 2026 and 8 August 2026: 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 8,140 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamina (8,187 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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.

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.