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Kasongo-Lunda fire, July 2017 Kasongo-Lunda

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2017, 00:12 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2017 in Kasongo-Lunda, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,857 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 72th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 41 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2017, of 138.

Burnt area
7,857ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
24 Jul 2017 – 31 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
24 Jul
2017
Heat detections
226
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Aug 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930311

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
36km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,708 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Kasongo-Lunda where it started
    7,915 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.3 %

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)
24 Jul 29.8 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul 30.8 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 29.9 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Jul 28.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Jul 31.0 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 30.7 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 30.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul 31.1 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug after 30.5 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Aug after 28.0 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug after 31.0 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug after 30.7 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Aug after 27.7 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
6 Aug after 28.8 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Aug after 30.9 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Aug after 29.4 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug after 29.9 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Aug after 30.6 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2017
After · 7 Aug 2017

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 · 226Every 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 Kasongo-Lunda fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 July 2017 and 31 July 2017: 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 7,857 hectares (78.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (7,915 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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.