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Kasenga fire, August 2025 Kasenga

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2025, 11:10 UTC

The fire started on 24 August 2025 in Kasenga, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,101 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Haut-Katanga since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 20 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2025, of 118.

Burnt area
10,101ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
24 Aug 2025 – 7 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
24 Aug
2025
Heat detections
498
in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Sept 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Aug7 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2426272829303112345678

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
52km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,705 ha in 2016, 2,222 ha in 2017, 1,978 ha in 2018, 4,815 ha in 2019, 4,236 ha in 2020, 2,368 ha in 2021, 5,044 ha in 2022, 1,081 ha in 2023, 42 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,239 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kasenga where it started
    10,172 ha reached on 23 Aug
    0.4 %

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)
23 Aug 26.5 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug 26.3 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Aug 28.5 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Aug 28.4 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug 27.4 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug 27.2 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Aug 28.1 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Aug 26.8 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Aug 26.6 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Sept 26.7 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Sept 26.5 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Sept 26.3 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Sept 26.8 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 27.5 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept 28.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 28.7 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept after 28.6 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Sept after 29.1 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Sept after 29.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept after 27.5 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
12 Sept after 28.2 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Sept after 28.6 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Sept after 28.7 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept after 29.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Sept after 29.7 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept after 30.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept after 30.4 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept after 28.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept after 29.9 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Sept after 28.0 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 29.2 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Sept after 30.3 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Aug 2025
After · 14 Sept 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³
Days over the guideline20 days
PM1089 µg/m³
Optical depth0.93
2223242526272829303112345678910
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 498Every 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 24 August 2025 and 7 September 2025: 15 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 10,101 hectares (101.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kasenga (10,172 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 52 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.