Kongolo fire, 29 July 2025 Kongolo
The fire started on 29 July 2025 in Kongolo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,192 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 38th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 18 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, of 118.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 10,192ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 29 Jul 2025 – 4 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- territories
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 337
- in a single hotspot: 153 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 450MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,001 ha in 2016, 6,425 ha in 2017, 5,636 ha in 2018, 5,831 ha in 2019, 3,100 ha in 2020, 4,998 ha in 2021, 4,297 ha in 2022, 4,076 ha in 2023, 954 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,528 ha that had burned before.
- 4,525 ha Kongolo fire, July 2019 5,930 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,085 ha Kongolo fire, June 2017 10,707 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,612 ha Kongolo fire, July 2016 7,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,165 ha Kongolo fire, July 2020 8,213 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 940 ha Kongolo fire, July 2018 19,676 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 156 ha Kongolo fire, July 2023 5,567 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 81 ha Kongolo fire, May 2017 5,201 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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.
What happened to each town
-
Kongolo where it started10,264 ha reached on 28 Jul0.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Jul | 34.4 °C | 22 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 29 Jul | 33.1 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 Jul | 33.5 °C | 22 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 31 Jul | 34.4 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 1 Aug | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Aug | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Aug | 34.6 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Aug | 34.7 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 5 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 6 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 24 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 27 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Aug after | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 20 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Aug after | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 35 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Aug after | 35.1 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Aug after | 35.5 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Aug after | 35.3 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Aug after | 32.9 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Aug after | 35.1 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Aug after | 35.4 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Aug after | 35.0 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 6 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 80: 5.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 337Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kongolo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 July 2025 and 4 August 2025: 7 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 10,192 hectares (101.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kongolo (10,264 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.
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. 337 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.
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.