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Kasongo-Lunda fire, 4 July 2019 Kasongo-Lunda, Feshi

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2019, 11:53 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2019 in Kasongo-Lunda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,517 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 43th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 220 with a page). Number 18 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, of 115.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Feshi · 2026Feshi · 2017Feshi · 2026Feshi · 2026

Burnt area
10,517ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
4 Jul 2019 – 8 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
4 Jul
2019
Heat detections
351
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul8 Jul
9 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jul 2019 · 17 MW · 2 5 Jul 2019 · 1,873 MW · 72 6 Jul 2019 · 2,496 MW · 131 7 Jul 2019 · 975 MW · 49 8 Jul 2019 · 1,592 MW · 90 9 Jul 2019 · 74 MW · 7
4 Jul 5 Jul 6 Jul 7 Jul 8 Jul 9 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

32°high
32km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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-Lunda where it started
    7,778 ha
    0.3 %
  2. Feshi
    2,807 ha
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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 Jul 31.6 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Jul 29.9 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Jul 30.5 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Jul 30.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jul 29.7 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jul after 28.1 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Jul after 28.5 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jul after 29.2 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Jul after 28.5 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Jul after 26.2 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Jul after 30.0 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
15 Jul after 31.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Jul after 29.6 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Jul after 29.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jul after 31.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2019
After · 15 Jul 2019

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 · 0Every 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-Lunda fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 July 2019 and 8 July 2019: 5 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 10,517 hectares (105.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kasongo-Lunda (7,778 ha, 0.3 %); Feshi (2,807 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 July 2019 → 8 July 2019.
  2. Start date: 30 June 2019 → 4 July 2019.
  3. Last day with fire: 8 July 2019 → 10 July 2019.
  4. Start date: 4 July 2019 → 30 June 2019.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.