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Kole fire, July 2021 Kole

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2021, 11:16 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2021 in Kole, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,421 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 53th largest in Sankuru since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 7 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021, of 97.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kole · 2020Kole · 2018Kole · 2016Kole · 2016

Burnt area
13,421ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
16 Jul 2021 – 1 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
16 Jul
2021
Heat detections
884
in a single hotspot: 166 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
493MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2021 · 37 MW · 8 17 Jul 2021 · 22 MW · 7 18 Jul 2021 · 34 MW · 4 19 Jul 2021 · 716 MW · 62 20 Jul 2021 · 71 MW · 10 21 Jul 2021 · 245 MW · 28 22 Jul 2021 · 249 MW · 31 23 Jul 2021 · 16 MW · 3 24 Jul 2021 · 572 MW · 56 25 Jul 2021 · 260 MW · 22 26 Jul 2021 · 3,450 MW · 218 27 Jul 2021 · 102 MW · 31 28 Jul 2021 · 465 MW · 54 29 Jul 2021 · 653 MW · 46 30 Jul 2021 · 881 MW · 77 31 Jul 2021 · 576 MW · 48 1 Aug 2021 · 38 MW · 5
16 Jul 19 Jul 22 Jul 25 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 31 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

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.4 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14,567 ha in 2016, 1,755 ha in 2017, 11,577 ha in 2018, 11,938 ha in 2019, 12,240 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,317 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.5% of the area of London (134 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. Kole where it started
    13,521 ha reached on 9 Jul
    0.8 %

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.

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)
9 Jul 33.0 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jul 33.4 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul 32.9 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Jul 33.3 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Jul 33.8 °C 19 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Jul 34.0 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Jul 33.1 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul 34.1 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 33.6 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul 31.7 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul 33.5 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul 31.9 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 33.6 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul 35.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul 32.5 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul 31.4 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul 34.0 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jul 32.6 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul 32.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul 33.8 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Jul 32.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul 34.0 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul 35.2 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Aug 33.7 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 31.9 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug after 32.8 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug after 34.1 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug after 33.6 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 33.2 °C 41 % 28 km/h 5.8 mm Low 7
7 Aug after 28.3 °C 60 % 32 km/h 0.8 mm Low 11
8 Aug after 30.5 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
9 Aug after 30.5 °C 47 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
10 Aug after 32.4 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.5 mm High 22
11 Aug after 32.8 °C 38 % 19 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
12 Aug after 30.7 °C 50 % 27 km/h 7.4 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2021
After · 8 Aug 2021

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 · 884Every 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 Kole fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 July 2021 and 1 August 2021: 17 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 13,421 hectares (134.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kole (13,521 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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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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. 884 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.

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.