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Kasenga fire, July 2018 Kasenga

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2018, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2018 in Kasenga, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,326 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Haut-Katanga since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 105 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2018, of 128.

Burnt area
5,326ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
1 Jul 2018 – 8 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
1 Jul
2018
Heat detections
152
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
886MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

12345678

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
59km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,945 ha in 2016, 3,537 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,136 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kasenga where it started
    5,361 ha reached on 1 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)
1 Jul 24.3 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Jul 24.5 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Jul 25.1 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jul 23.0 °C 27 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Jul 22.1 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Jul 20.7 °C 32 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Jul 20.9 °C 36 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Jul 21.7 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jul after 22.9 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Jul after 23.6 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Jul after 23.7 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul after 23.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jul after 23.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Jul after 24.3 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jul after 23.9 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul after 21.8 °C 35 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul after 18.3 °C 42 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Jul after 19.4 °C 36 % 51 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 · 24 Jun 2018
After · 15 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 · 152Every 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 Kasenga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 July 2018 and 8 July 2018: 8 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 5,326 hectares (53.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kasenga (5,361 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.