How long did the Katako-Kombe fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 June 2022 to 9 July 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 June 2022 to 2 July 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,135 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Katako-Kombe (8,189 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2022-06-20 → 2022-07-09

Katako-Kombe fire, 20 June 2022 Katako-Kombe

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2022, 23:46 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2022 in Katako-Kombe, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,135 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 89th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 32 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Katako-Kombe · 2020 Katako-Kombe · 2018 Katako-Kombe · 2016 Katako-Kombe · 2023

Burnt area: 8,135ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 20 Jun 2022 – 9 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 20 Jun; 2022
Heat detections: 376; in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start: 5; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 278MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun9 Jul

Play back 9 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 23 Jun 26 Jun 27 Jun 1 Jul 4 Jul 7 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

35°high

40km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,266 ha in 2016, 3,691 ha in 2017, 6,171 ha in 2018, 1,553 ha in 2019, 7,686 ha in 2020, 6,011 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,943 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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

Katako-Kombe where it started

8,189 ha reached on 20 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area2.4 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (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)
20 Jun	29.3 °C	55 %	22 km/h	1.9 mm	Very low 5
21 Jun	31.8 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
22 Jun	31.1 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
23 Jun	31.2 °C	41 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
24 Jun	32.3 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Jun	31.3 °C	39 %	18 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
26 Jun	32.2 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 17
27 Jun	34.1 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 Jun	32.5 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Jun	32.8 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Jun	33.6 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Jul	33.9 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Jul	32.5 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Jul	33.4 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Jul	34.8 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Jul	34.3 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Jul	33.1 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Jul	34.8 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Jul	35.1 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Jul	35.2 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Jul after	34.7 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 Jul after	33.3 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jul after	34.8 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Jul after	35.2 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Jul after	34.9 °C	27 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Jul after	35.2 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
16 Jul after	33.9 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Jul after	33.4 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Jul after	31.2 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
19 Jul after	28.7 °C	53 %	27 km/h	0.4 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jun 2022

After · 16 Jul 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 · 376Every 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 Katako-Kombe fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 June 2022 to 9 July 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 June 2022 to 2 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,135 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Katako-Kombe (8,189 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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: 2 July 2022 → 9 July 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 22 June 2022 → 20 June 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 June 2022 to 2 July 2022. 376 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.

Where it burned