How long did the Kasongo-Lunda fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 June 2026 and 17 June 2026: 13 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 6,065 hectares (60.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kasongo-Lunda (3,433 ha, 0.1 %); Feshi (2,668 ha, 0.1 %).

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 · 2026-06-05 → 2026-06-17

Kasongo-Lunda fire, 5 June 2026 Kasongo-Lunda, Feshi

Out · last detection 18 Jun 2026, 12:53 UTC

The fire started on 5 June 2026 in Kasongo-Lunda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,065 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 122th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 220 with a page). Number 371 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 6,065ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 5 Jun 2026 – 17 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 5 Jun; 2026
Heat detections: 109; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Average daily power: 83MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jun17 Jun

Play back 18 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jun 8 Jun 9 Jun 10 Jun 14 Jun 16 Jun 18 Jun

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

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 722 ha in 2016, 1,988 ha in 2017, 1,478 ha in 2018, 2,724 ha in 2019, 2,128 ha in 2020, 721 ha in 2021, 511 ha in 2022, 986 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,027 ha that had burned before.

2,128 ha Kasongo-Lunda fire, June 2020 6,060 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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

3,433 ha

0.1 %
Feshi

2,668 ha

0.1 %

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 area2.8 ha

Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 May 2026

After · 24 Jun 2026

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 10 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 216 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 150: 10.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak216 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10222 µg/m³

Optical depth1.21

WHO 15

34567891011121314151617181920

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 · 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 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 5 June 2026 and 17 June 2026: 13 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 6,065 hectares (60.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kasongo-Lunda (3,433 ha, 0.1 %); Feshi (2,668 ha, 0.1 %).
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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 22 June 2026 → 17 June 2026.
27 October 2026 Start date: 30 May 2026 → 5 June 2026.
26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 June 2026 → 22 June 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 5 June 2026 → 30 May 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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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