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Kongolo fire, 12 July 2023 Kongolo

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2023, 12:32 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2023 in Kongolo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,860 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 31th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 11 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023, of 76.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kongolo · 2021Kongolo · 2020Kongolo · 2026Kongolo · 2025

Burnt area
10,860ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
12 Jul 2023 – 19 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
12 Jul
2023
Heat detections
895
in a single hotspot: 125 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
268MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul19 Aug
19 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 2023 · 53 MW · 4 16 Jul 2023 · 2 MW · 1 17 Jul 2023 · 58 MW · 14 18 Jul 2023 · 446 MW · 33 19 Jul 2023 · 94 MW · 5 20 Jul 2023 · 79 MW · 5 21 Jul 2023 · 140 MW · 11 22 Jul 2023 · 697 MW · 45 23 Jul 2023 · 536 MW · 51 24 Jul 2023 · 83 MW · 19 25 Jul 2023 · 2,095 MW · 109 28 Jul 2023 · 526 MW · 53 29 Jul 2023 · 222 MW · 32 30 Jul 2023 · 199 MW · 22 31 Jul 2023 · 154 MW · 12 1 Aug 2023 · 313 MW · 28 2 Aug 2023 · 106 MW · 15 3 Aug 2023 · 273 MW · 24 4 Aug 2023 · 438 MW · 52 5 Aug 2023 · 539 MW · 62 6 Aug 2023 · 533 MW · 53 7 Aug 2023 · 257 MW · 52 8 Aug 2023 · 38 MW · 17 9 Aug 2023 · 102 MW · 26 10 Aug 2023 · 265 MW · 20 11 Aug 2023 · 97 MW · 17 12 Aug 2023 · 194 MW · 21 13 Aug 2023 · 55 MW · 11 14 Aug 2023 · 7 MW · 3 15 Aug 2023 · 72 MW · 13 16 Aug 2023 · 150 MW · 33 17 Aug 2023 · 199 MW · 18 18 Aug 2023 · 57 MW · 9 19 Aug 2023 · 45 MW · 5
15 Jul 20 Jul 25 Jul 1 Aug 6 Aug 11 Aug 16 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

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,919 ha in 2016, 2,363 ha in 2017, 1,704 ha in 2018, 9,217 ha in 2019, 7,248 ha in 2020, 9,710 ha in 2021, 7,676 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,688 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (109 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
    10,928 ha reached on 15 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area4.4 ha
Residents≈ 1,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.4 hectares of built-up land and about 1,900 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
12 Jul 34.6 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul 34.0 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jul 34.5 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Jul 34.9 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jul 35.7 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 35.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul 35.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Jul 35.3 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul 35.9 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jul 35.0 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul 35.5 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul 35.2 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jul 35.1 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul 36.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul 35.9 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jul 34.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jul 35.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Jul 35.9 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul 36.2 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jul 36.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Aug 36.3 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Aug 34.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Aug 33.8 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Aug 34.4 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Aug 35.2 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Aug 35.8 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Aug 35.7 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Aug 34.8 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug 35.8 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Aug 36.1 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Aug 35.5 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug 36.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Aug 36.0 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Aug 34.2 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Aug 32.7 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Aug 34.0 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug 35.4 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Aug 36.4 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Aug 34.8 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Aug after 36.3 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Aug after 36.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Aug after 36.6 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Aug after 36.3 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Aug after 35.2 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Aug after 34.3 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.8 mm High 28
26 Aug after 34.5 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Aug after 35.0 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug after 34.3 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Aug after 35.7 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2023
After · 26 Aug 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 30 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 177 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 120: 8.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak177 µg/m³
Days over the guideline30 days
PM10254 µg/m³
Optical depth2.38
171819202122232425262728293031123456789101112131415
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 895Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 July 2023 to 19 August 2023 (39 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2023 to 12 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,860 hectares (108.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kongolo (10,928 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 August 2023 → 19 August 2023.
  2. Start date: 19 July 2023 → 12 July 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 July 2023 to 12 August 2023. 895 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 2025, 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.