How long did the Kasongo-Lunda fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 June 2022 and 16 June 2022: 9 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 7,267 hectares (72.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (7,308 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2022-06-08 → 2022-06-16

Kasongo-Lunda fire, June 2022 Kasongo-Lunda

Out · last detection 16 Jun 2022, 13:14 UTC

The fire started on 8 June 2022 in Kasongo-Lunda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,267 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 85th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 41 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasongo-Lunda · 2026 Kasongo-Lunda · 2020 Kasongo-Lunda · 2026 Kasongo-Lunda · 2026

Burnt area: 7,267ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 8 Jun 2022 – 16 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 8 Jun; 2022
Heat detections: 190; in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 275MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jun16 Jun

Play back 16 Jun 2022

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jun 10 Jun 11 Jun 12 Jun 14 Jun 16 Jun

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

32km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 22 Jun.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,007 ha in 2016, 1,554 ha in 2017, 3,698 ha in 2018, 3,269 ha in 2019, 2,656 ha in 2020, 895 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,687 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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

Kasongo-Lunda where it started

7,308 ha reached on 6 Jun

0.3 %

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)
8 Jun	30.0 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
9 Jun	30.4 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Jun	30.4 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Jun	30.8 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Jun	30.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Jun	30.4 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Jun	29.6 °C	34 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Jun	30.4 °C	34 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Jun	29.7 °C	31 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Jun after	30.3 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Jun after	28.5 °C	33 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Jun after	28.5 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Jun after	28.4 °C	42 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Jun after	29.4 °C	41 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
22 Jun after	26.9 °C	52 %	27 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Jun 2022

After · 23 Jun 2022

Before After

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 · 190Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 8 June 2022 and 16 June 2022: 9 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 7,267 hectares (72.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (7,308 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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. 190 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.

Where it burned