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Kamonia fire, 15 June 2019 Kamonia

Out · last detection 2 Jul 2019, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 15 June 2019 in Kamonia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,814 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Kasaï since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 16 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamonia · 2017Kamonia · 2026Kamonia · 2026Kamonia · 2026

Burnt area
10,814ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
15 Jun 2019 – 2 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
15 Jun
2019
Heat detections
401
in a single hotspot: 455 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jun2 Jul
2 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jun 2019 · 59 MW · 3 16 Jun 2019 · 128 MW · 4 17 Jun 2019 · 32 MW · 4 18 Jun 2019 · 1,094 MW · 20 19 Jun 2019 · 3,224 MW · 50 20 Jun 2019 · 1,321 MW · 31 21 Jun 2019 · 252 MW · 7 22 Jun 2019 · 844 MW · 29 23 Jun 2019 · 433 MW · 19 24 Jun 2019 · 9,626 MW · 148 25 Jun 2019 · 6,527 MW · 66 26 Jun 2019 · 8 MW · 1 28 Jun 2019 · 283 MW · 10 29 Jun 2019 · 214 MW · 2 30 Jun 2019 · 31 MW · 3 1 Jul 2019 · 16 MW · 2 2 Jul 2019 · 10 MW · 2
15 Jun 18 Jun 21 Jun 24 Jun 28 Jun 1 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

33°high
32km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,811 ha in 2016, 4,016 ha in 2017, 1,672 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,325 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (108 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. Kamonia where it started
    10,890 ha reached on 15 Jun
    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 area0.12 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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)
15 Jun 31.5 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Jun 30.7 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Jun 31.3 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Jun 31.6 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Jun 31.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Jun 31.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Jun 31.5 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jun 30.8 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jun 31.2 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jun 31.6 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jun 32.0 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Jun 31.8 °C 26 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jun 32.5 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jun 31.1 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Jun 31.2 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Jun 32.0 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Jul 32.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Jul 32.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Jul after 32.6 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Jul after 33.3 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul after 32.5 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jul after 32.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Jul after 32.3 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jul after 31.4 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Jul after 31.8 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jul after 31.2 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jul after 32.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jul after 31.2 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jun 2019
After · 9 Jul 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 · 401Every 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 Kamonia fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 June 2019 to 2 July 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 June 2019 to 25 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,814 hectares (108.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamonia (10,890 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 June 2019 → 2 July 2019.
  2. Start date: 19 June 2019 → 15 June 2019.

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 19 June 2019 to 25 June 2019. 401 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.