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Kasenga fire, October 2022 Kasenga

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2022, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2022 in Kasenga, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,075 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 90th largest in Haut-Katanga since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 103 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2022, of 106.

Burnt area
5,075ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
4 Oct 2022 – 10 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
4 Oct
2022
Heat detections
160
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Oct 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct10 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

45678910

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
53km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 197 ha in 2016, 754 ha in 2017, 5 ha in 2018, 1,131 ha in 2019, 836 ha in 2020, 2,251 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,193 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kasenga where it started
    5,111 ha reached on 3 Oct
    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)
4 Oct 30.0 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Oct 30.7 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Oct 30.0 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Oct 29.7 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct 29.4 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Oct 29.0 °C 13 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Oct 29.0 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Oct after 28.6 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Oct after 29.7 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Oct after 29.6 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Oct after 29.8 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct after 30.0 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Oct after 30.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Oct after 27.9 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Oct after 30.2 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Oct after 30.3 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Oct after 29.4 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2022
After · 17 Oct 2022

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 · 160Every 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 4 October 2022 and 10 October 2022: 7 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 5,075 hectares (50.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kasenga (5,111 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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.