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Kasongo fire, June 2018 Kasongo

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2018, 11:03 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2018 in Kasongo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,749 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Maniema since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 50 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasongo · 2026Kasongo · 2018Kasongo · 2021

Burnt area
6,749ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
30 Jun 2018 – 30 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
30 Jun
2018
Heat detections
449
in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
157MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun30 Jul
30 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2018 · 3 MW · 1 1 Jul 2018 · 37 MW · 3 2 Jul 2018 · 42 MW · 5 3 Jul 2018 · 17 MW · 2 4 Jul 2018 · 26 MW · 3 5 Jul 2018 · 168 MW · 16 6 Jul 2018 · 144 MW · 20 7 Jul 2018 · 218 MW · 21 8 Jul 2018 · 115 MW · 12 9 Jul 2018 · 294 MW · 34 10 Jul 2018 · 140 MW · 18 11 Jul 2018 · 187 MW · 19 12 Jul 2018 · 354 MW · 36 13 Jul 2018 · 284 MW · 21 14 Jul 2018 · 81 MW · 6 15 Jul 2018 · 140 MW · 17 16 Jul 2018 · 465 MW · 37 17 Jul 2018 · 291 MW · 36 18 Jul 2018 · 394 MW · 30 19 Jul 2018 · 153 MW · 11 20 Jul 2018 · 182 MW · 19 21 Jul 2018 · 167 MW · 16 22 Jul 2018 · 50 MW · 6 23 Jul 2018 · 313 MW · 28 24 Jul 2018 · 104 MW · 11 25 Jul 2018 · 22 MW · 2 28 Jul 2018 · 158 MW · 15 29 Jul 2018 · 10 MW · 3 30 Jul 2018 · 4 MW · 1
30 Jun 5 Jul 10 Jul 15 Jul 16 Jul 20 Jul 25 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,266 ha in 2016, 977 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,754 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (67 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. Kasongo where it started
    6,795 ha reached on 30 Jun
    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.

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)
6 Jul 34.0 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jul 34.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Jul 34.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Jul 35.6 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Jul 35.8 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jul 36.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Jul 35.9 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul 35.1 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jul 36.0 °C 21 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jul 36.3 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jul 34.6 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Jul 34.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul 34.7 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul 33.9 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Jul 35.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jul 36.2 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul 35.9 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul 35.8 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jul 35.1 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Jul 35.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul 30.5 °C 39 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jul 32.2 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Jul 33.9 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jul 33.2 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
30 Jul 33.0 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
31 Jul after 33.6 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Aug after 31.0 °C 48 % 23 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
2 Aug after 31.6 °C 51 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
3 Aug after 34.1 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2018
After · 6 Aug 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 · 449Every 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 Kasongo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 June 2018 to 30 July 2018 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 July 2018 to 24 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,749 hectares (67.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kasongo (6,795 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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: 24 July 2018 → 30 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 6 July 2018 → 30 June 2018.

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.

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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 6 July 2018 to 24 July 2018. 449 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.

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.