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Kapanga fire, July 2018 Kapanga

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2018, 12:36 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2018 in Kapanga, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,331 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 82th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 104 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2018, of 128.

Burnt area
5,331ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
16 Jul 2018 – 24 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
16 Jul
2018
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul24 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

16171819202122232425

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,771 ha in 2016, 3,470 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,009 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kapanga where it started
    5,371 ha reached on 14 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)
16 Jul 31.1 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jul 29.1 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jul 27.9 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul 29.1 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Jul 30.0 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Jul 30.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jul 30.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul 30.9 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Jul 29.4 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Jul after 29.2 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 30.7 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Jul after 32.0 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul after 32.3 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jul after 31.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Jul after 32.1 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jul after 31.7 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Aug after 30.9 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Aug after 30.9 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug after 31.4 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2018
After · 31 Jul 2018

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 · 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 Kapanga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 July 2018 and 24 July 2018: 9 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 5,331 hectares (53.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kapanga (5,371 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

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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.