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Katako-Kombe fire, 21 June 2016 Katako-Kombe, Lubefu, Lodja

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2016, 11:41 UTC

The fire started on 21 June 2016 in Katako-Kombe, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,727 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 26th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 6 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2016, of 153.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Katako-Kombe · 2026Katako-Kombe · 2018Lodja · 2026Lodja · 2022

Burnt area
27,727ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
21 Jun 2016 – 22 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
3
territories
Started on
21 Jun
2016
Heat detections
1,703
in a single hotspot: 251 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
761MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jun22 Jul
22 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jun 2016 · 283 MW · 15 22 Jun 2016 · 272 MW · 14 23 Jun 2016 · 3 MW · 1 24 Jun 2016 · 49 MW · 3 25 Jun 2016 · 280 MW · 26 26 Jun 2016 · 519 MW · 23 27 Jun 2016 · 1,260 MW · 85 28 Jun 2016 · 555 MW · 77 29 Jun 2016 · 9 MW · 1 30 Jun 2016 · 400 MW · 28 1 Jul 2016 · 9 MW · 2 2 Jul 2016 · 1,198 MW · 70 3 Jul 2016 · 96 MW · 16 4 Jul 2016 · 1,385 MW · 125 5 Jul 2016 · 2,091 MW · 220 6 Jul 2016 · 4,684 MW · 214 7 Jul 2016 · 174 MW · 16 8 Jul 2016 · 719 MW · 46 9 Jul 2016 · 2,213 MW · 200 10 Jul 2016 · 2,943 MW · 121 11 Jul 2016 · 1,941 MW · 149 12 Jul 2016 · 238 MW · 21 13 Jul 2016 · 482 MW · 51 14 Jul 2016 · 168 MW · 31 15 Jul 2016 · 579 MW · 56 16 Jul 2016 · 479 MW · 41 18 Jul 2016 · 31 MW · 6 19 Jul 2016 · 83 MW · 13 20 Jul 2016 · 14 MW · 2 21 Jul 2016 · 35 MW · 7 22 Jul 2016 · 408 MW · 23
21 Jun 26 Jun 1 Jul 6 Jul 11 Jul 16 Jul 22 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

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.2 mm on 25 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (277 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. Katako-Kombe where it started
    27,093 ha reached on 21 Jun
    1.1 %
  2. Lubefu
    793 ha reached on 25 Jun
    0.1 %
  3. Lodja
    45 ha reached on 21 Jun
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area5.6 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.6 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
21 Jun 28.9 °C 60 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
22 Jun 31.9 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Jun 32.2 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jun 32.1 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Jun 32.0 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Jun 29.3 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Jun 33.0 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Jun 32.0 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
29 Jun 31.9 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
30 Jun 32.1 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Jul 32.3 °C 37 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
2 Jul 33.3 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Jul 34.0 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Jul 33.4 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Jul 33.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jul 33.0 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jul 32.4 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jul 32.9 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Jul 33.6 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Jul 33.5 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jul 32.6 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Jul 31.5 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jul 32.9 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul 32.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul 31.3 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jul 33.5 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Jul 33.0 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul 33.8 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul 33.0 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 32.8 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 33.0 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul 33.3 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jul after 32.4 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jul after 31.0 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
25 Jul after 31.6 °C 47 % 29 km/h 7.2 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2016
After · 29 Jul 2016

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 · 1,703Every 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 Katako-Kombe fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 June 2016 to 22 July 2016 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 June 2016 to 15 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,727 hectares (277.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Katako-Kombe (27,093 ha, 1.1 %); Lubefu (793 ha, 0.1 %); Lodja (45 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 15 July 2016 → 22 July 2016.
  2. Start date: 28 June 2016 → 21 June 2016.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 June 2016 to 15 July 2016. 1,703 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 2015, 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.