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

Kamonia fire, 14 July 2020 Kamonia

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2020, 12:36 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2020 in Kamonia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,619 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Kasaï since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 39 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamonia · 2016Kamonia · 2023Kamonia · 2020Kamonia · 2020

Burnt area
10,619ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
14 Jul 2020 – 14 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
14 Jul
2020
Heat detections
787
in a single hotspot: 164 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
262MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul14 Aug
15 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2020 · 39 MW · 3 15 Jul 2020 · 12 MW · 2 16 Jul 2020 · 215 MW · 27 17 Jul 2020 · 59 MW · 4 18 Jul 2020 · 34 MW · 4 19 Jul 2020 · 54 MW · 10 20 Jul 2020 · 202 MW · 22 21 Jul 2020 · 292 MW · 32 22 Jul 2020 · 294 MW · 19 23 Jul 2020 · 149 MW · 15 24 Jul 2020 · 92 MW · 12 25 Jul 2020 · 447 MW · 42 26 Jul 2020 · 2 MW · 2 27 Jul 2020 · 2,445 MW · 132 28 Jul 2020 · 304 MW · 30 29 Jul 2020 · 117 MW · 14 30 Jul 2020 · 275 MW · 23 31 Jul 2020 · 527 MW · 47 1 Aug 2020 · 596 MW · 59 2 Aug 2020 · 301 MW · 33 3 Aug 2020 · 326 MW · 37 4 Aug 2020 · 174 MW · 31 5 Aug 2020 · 289 MW · 39 6 Aug 2020 · 644 MW · 58 7 Aug 2020 · 239 MW · 17 8 Aug 2020 · 7 MW · 2 9 Aug 2020 · 13 MW · 5 10 Aug 2020 · 131 MW · 15 11 Aug 2020 · 143 MW · 24 12 Aug 2020 · 48 MW · 9 13 Aug 2020 · 146 MW · 13 14 Aug 2020 · 9 MW · 2 15 Aug 2020 · 12 MW · 3
14 Jul 19 Jul 24 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 3 Aug 8 Aug 13 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

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,077 ha in 2016, 4,111 ha in 2017, 1,376 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,449 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (106 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
    10,685 ha reached on 14 Jul
    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 area2.5 ha
Residents≈ 850

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 850 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)
14 Jul 30.3 °C 46 % 22 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 20
15 Jul 29.2 °C 46 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
16 Jul 31.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Jul 31.0 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Jul 30.4 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul 30.6 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Jul 31.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Jul 32.3 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Jul 33.0 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jul 32.6 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Jul 32.4 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Jul 31.8 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 32.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jul 31.6 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jul 31.4 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul 31.7 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Jul 33.1 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 33.7 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug 33.1 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Aug 32.8 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 31.7 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Aug 32.5 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 29.0 °C 52 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Aug 30.9 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
7 Aug 30.8 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Aug 30.6 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
9 Aug 30.5 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug 29.3 °C 50 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
11 Aug 30.4 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
12 Aug 30.7 °C 47 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Aug 31.2 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Aug 30.5 °C 40 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
15 Aug after 28.8 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
16 Aug after 32.3 °C 41 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Aug after 31.2 °C 53 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
18 Aug after 30.5 °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 · 7 Jul 2020
After · 21 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 · 787Every 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 14 July 2020 to 14 August 2020 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2020 to 7 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,619 hectares (106.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamonia (10,685 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °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: 7 August 2020 → 14 August 2020.
  2. Start date: 18 July 2020 → 14 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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2020 to 7 August 2020. 787 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.