How long did the Kasongo-Lunda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2025 to 1 September 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2025 to 25 August 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,886 hectares (138.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (13,963 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 28 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 · 2025-08-07 → 2025-09-01

Kasongo-Lunda fire, 7 August 2025 Kasongo-Lunda

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2025, 11:43 UTC

The fire started on 7 August 2025 in Kasongo-Lunda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,886 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 220 with a page). Number 10 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 118.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasongo-Lunda · 2024 Kasongo-Lunda · 2026 Kasongo-Lunda · 2020 Kasongo-Lunda · 2025

Burnt area: 13,886ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 7 Aug 2025 – 1 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 7 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 838; in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 306MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Aug1 Sept

Play back 1 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Aug 11 Aug 15 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 23 Aug 27 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

28km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 5 Sept.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,536 ha in 2016, 1,921 ha in 2017, 109 ha in 2018, 1,588 ha in 2019, 11,105 ha in 2020, 959 ha in 2021, 875 ha in 2022, 699 ha in 2023, 7,778 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,785 ha that had burned before.

4,810 ha Kasongo-Lunda fire, August 2024 5,420 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.8% of the area of London (139 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

13,963 ha reached on 7 Aug

0.5 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
7 Aug	30.5 °C	39 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Aug	30.1 °C	39 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Aug	29.8 °C	40 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Aug	30.0 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Aug	31.6 °C	38 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Aug	31.3 °C	40 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
13 Aug	27.9 °C	50 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
14 Aug	29.0 °C	47 %	25 km/h	0.3 mm	High 24
15 Aug	30.7 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Aug	31.7 °C	31 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Aug	32.5 °C	31 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Aug	31.2 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 Aug	32.9 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Aug	32.2 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Aug	30.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug	29.9 °C	39 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Aug	30.4 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
24 Aug	30.9 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Aug	29.3 °C	46 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
26 Aug	31.9 °C	40 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug	32.0 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.5 mm	High 27
28 Aug	24.1 °C	71 %	25 km/h	3.5 mm	Very low 4
29 Aug	31.8 °C	45 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
30 Aug	31.7 °C	48 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
31 Aug	30.4 °C	44 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Sept	31.1 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
2 Sept after	31.9 °C	38 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Sept after	32.5 °C	32 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
4 Sept after	29.5 °C	47 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
5 Sept after	31.1 °C	48 %	21 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Jul 2025

After · 8 Sept 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 22 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 118 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak118 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10122 µg/m³

Optical depth2.37

WHO 15

111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 838Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2025 to 1 September 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2025 to 25 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,886 hectares (138.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (13,963 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 28 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 August 2025 → 1 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 13 August 2025 → 7 August 2025.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 August 2025 to 25 August 2025. 838 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned