Kenge fire, August 2020 Democratic Republic of the Congo
The fire started on 5 August 2020 in Kenge, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,949 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 69th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 220 with a page). Number 64 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020, of 165.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,949ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 5 Aug 2020 – 19 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 0
- territories
- Started on
- 5 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 294
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 159MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,726 haFeshiJune 2022 · 6 days · 12 km away
- 18,207 haMasi-Manimba22 May 2026 · 21 days · 21 km away
- 11,401 haMasi-Manimba25 May 2026 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 21,824 haKengeJune 2016 · 9 days · 35 km away
- 7,236 haFeshiJune 2026 · 8 days · 36 km away
- 8,611 haMasi-Manimba17 August 2026 · 11 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kenge fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 August 2020 and 19 August 2020: 15 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 7,949 hectares (79.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
Report an error
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.
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.