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Kamonia fire, 16 July 2020 Kamonia

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2020, 12:18 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2020 in Kamonia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,918 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Kasaï since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 28 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamonia · 2026Kamonia · 2023Kamonia · 2023Kamonia · 2019

Burnt area
12,918ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
16 Jul 2020 – 15 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
16 Jul
2020
Heat detections
847
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
250MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul15 Aug
16 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2020 · 79 MW · 12 17 Jul 2020 · 16 MW · 3 18 Jul 2020 · 40 MW · 6 19 Jul 2020 · 21 MW · 3 20 Jul 2020 · 150 MW · 19 21 Jul 2020 · 191 MW · 18 22 Jul 2020 · 25 MW · 5 23 Jul 2020 · 95 MW · 11 24 Jul 2020 · 252 MW · 26 25 Jul 2020 · 639 MW · 45 27 Jul 2020 · 1,068 MW · 100 28 Jul 2020 · 405 MW · 27 29 Jul 2020 · 130 MW · 14 30 Jul 2020 · 274 MW · 33 31 Jul 2020 · 924 MW · 95 1 Aug 2020 · 509 MW · 65 2 Aug 2020 · 88 MW · 14 3 Aug 2020 · 313 MW · 34 4 Aug 2020 · 141 MW · 26 5 Aug 2020 · 1,011 MW · 94 6 Aug 2020 · 354 MW · 60 7 Aug 2020 · 217 MW · 27 8 Aug 2020 · 22 MW · 5 9 Aug 2020 · 13 MW · 4 10 Aug 2020 · 218 MW · 24 11 Aug 2020 · 204 MW · 34 12 Aug 2020 · 205 MW · 17 13 Aug 2020 · 18 MW · 2 14 Aug 2020 · 17 MW · 3 15 Aug 2020 · 119 MW · 20 16 Aug 2020 · 4 MW · 1
16 Jul 21 Jul 27 Jul 1 Aug 6 Aug 11 Aug 16 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
34km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.7 mm on 18 Aug.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,380 ha in 2016, 249 ha in 2017, 1,475 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,293 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.2% of the area of London (129 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
    12,996 ha reached on 16 Jul
    0.5 %

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 area1.8 ha
Residents≈ 600

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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)
16 Jul 32.2 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Jul 31.3 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Jul 30.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul 30.9 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Jul 31.8 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Jul 32.6 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul 33.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jul 32.9 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Jul 32.7 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Jul 32.1 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 33.0 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jul 31.9 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jul 31.7 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 32.0 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul 33.4 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul 34.0 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug 33.4 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Aug 33.1 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 32.0 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Aug 32.8 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug 29.3 °C 52 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Aug 31.2 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
7 Aug 31.1 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Aug 30.9 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
9 Aug 30.8 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug 29.6 °C 50 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
11 Aug 30.7 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
12 Aug 31.0 °C 47 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Aug 31.5 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Aug 30.8 °C 40 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
15 Aug 29.1 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
16 Aug after 32.6 °C 41 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Aug after 31.5 °C 53 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
18 Aug after 30.8 °C 57 % 27 km/h 9.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2020
After · 22 Aug 2020

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 · 847Every 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 16 July 2020 to 15 August 2020 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2020 to 8 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,918 hectares (129.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamonia (12,996 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 August 2020 → 15 August 2020.
  2. Start date: 18 July 2020 → 16 July 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2020 to 8 August 2020. 847 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.