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Kazumba fire, 21 July 2020 Kazumba

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2020, 11:21 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2020 in Kazumba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,840 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Central Kasai since 2016 (of 85 with a page). Number 30 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kazumba · 2020Kazumba · 2023Kazumba · 2026Kazumba · 2017

Burnt area
12,840ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
21 Jul 2020 – 19 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
21 Jul
2020
Heat detections
758
in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
304MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul19 Aug
19 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jul 2020 · 17 MW · 5 22 Jul 2020 · 94 MW · 10 23 Jul 2020 · 20 MW · 5 24 Jul 2020 · 80 MW · 7 25 Jul 2020 · 49 MW · 3 27 Jul 2020 · 559 MW · 46 28 Jul 2020 · 68 MW · 6 30 Jul 2020 · 37 MW · 4 31 Jul 2020 · 933 MW · 69 1 Aug 2020 · 586 MW · 40 3 Aug 2020 · 358 MW · 28 4 Aug 2020 · 173 MW · 9 5 Aug 2020 · 228 MW · 25 6 Aug 2020 · 321 MW · 32 7 Aug 2020 · 457 MW · 37 8 Aug 2020 · 882 MW · 67 9 Aug 2020 · 181 MW · 18 10 Aug 2020 · 257 MW · 33 11 Aug 2020 · 628 MW · 52 12 Aug 2020 · 7 MW · 1 13 Aug 2020 · 105 MW · 13 14 Aug 2020 · 280 MW · 29 15 Aug 2020 · 71 MW · 17 16 Aug 2020 · 87 MW · 11 17 Aug 2020 · 1,103 MW · 120 18 Aug 2020 · 437 MW · 45 19 Aug 2020 · 187 MW · 26
21 Jul 25 Jul 31 Jul 5 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 17 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
34km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.9 mm on 20 Aug.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,101 ha in 2016, 3,991 ha in 2017, 3,576 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,609 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.1% of the area of London (128 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. Kazumba where it started
    12,915 ha reached on 21 Jul
    1.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area4.7 ha
Residents≈ 1,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.7 hectares of built-up land and about 1,700 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)
21 Jul 32.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul 32.4 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jul 32.1 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jul 31.4 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Jul 31.3 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Jul 32.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jul 31.4 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jul 30.9 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul 31.1 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 32.6 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 33.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug 32.8 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Aug 32.4 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Aug 31.9 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Aug 32.5 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 28.8 °C 52 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Aug 29.6 °C 51 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Aug 29.6 °C 52 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Aug 30.5 °C 47 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
9 Aug 30.1 °C 48 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Aug 28.7 °C 52 % 23 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 19
11 Aug 30.1 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
12 Aug 30.2 °C 49 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
13 Aug 30.7 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Aug 29.2 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
15 Aug 29.1 °C 55 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
16 Aug 31.7 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Aug 32.1 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
18 Aug 30.7 °C 50 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
19 Aug 32.0 °C 44 % 25 km/h 9.4 mm Very low 5
20 Aug after 29.3 °C 59 % 22 km/h 5.9 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2020
After · 26 Aug 2020

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 · 758Every 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 Kazumba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 July 2020 to 19 August 2020 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2020 to 19 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,840 hectares (128.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kazumba (12,915 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 28 July 2020 → 21 July 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 July 2020 to 19 August 2020. 758 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.