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Kongolo fire, 4 July 2018 Kongolo, Kabalo

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2018, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2018 in Kongolo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,676 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 8 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kongolo · 2017Kabalo · 2016Kongolo · 2017Kabalo · 2021

Burnt area
19,676ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
4 Jul 2018 – 17 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
2
territories
Started on
4 Jul
2018
Heat detections
998
in a single hotspot: 270 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
688MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul17 Jul
18 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jul 2018 · 2,410 MW · 159 5 Jul 2018 · 296 MW · 64 6 Jul 2018 · 1,251 MW · 139 7 Jul 2018 · 866 MW · 96 8 Jul 2018 · 583 MW · 101 9 Jul 2018 · 118 MW · 29 10 Jul 2018 · 219 MW · 49 11 Jul 2018 · 2,150 MW · 70 12 Jul 2018 · 97 MW · 25 13 Jul 2018 · 253 MW · 30 14 Jul 2018 · 86 MW · 32 15 Jul 2018 · 1,543 MW · 20 16 Jul 2018 · 385 MW · 35 17 Jul 2018 · 59 MW · 9 18 Jul 2018 · 3 MW · 1
4 Jul 7 Jul 10 Jul 13 Jul 16 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
52km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,865 ha in 2016, 10,771 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,270 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (197 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. Kongolo where it started
    11,446 ha reached on 3 Jul
    0.9 %
  2. Kabalo
    8,362 ha reached on 4 Jul
    0.6 %

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)
3 Jul 35.4 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Jul 34.1 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Jul 33.4 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jul 33.0 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Jul 33.1 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Jul 33.5 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Jul 34.2 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jul 35.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jul 35.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Jul 34.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jul 34.3 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Jul 35.3 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jul 35.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Jul 33.6 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Jul 32.5 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jul after 32.2 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Jul after 32.5 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jul after 33.7 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jul after 34.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Jul after 34.2 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jul after 34.0 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Jul after 33.3 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Jul after 33.7 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jul after 33.3 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Jul after 32.9 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul after 34.0 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Jul after 34.1 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul after 33.6 °C 28 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Jul after 32.4 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug after 31.6 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Aug after 32.1 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2018
After · 24 Jul 2018

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 · 998Every 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 Kongolo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 July 2018 and 17 July 2018: 14 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 19,676 hectares (196.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kongolo (11,446 ha, 0.9 %); Kabalo (8,362 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 998 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.