Mafinga fire, 30 September 2026 Mafinga, Chama
The fire started on 30 September 2026 in Mafinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,919 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 243th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 517 with a page). Number 230 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,919ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 30 Sept 2026 – 10 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 30 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 73
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 91MW
- 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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,328 ha in 2016, 2,065 ha in 2017, 291 ha in 2018, 1,730 ha in 2020, 1,320 ha in 2021, 3,582 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,703 ha that had burned before.
- 3,211 ha Mafinga fire, October 2025 3,833 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,761 ha Mafinga fire, October 2016 3,015 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 703 ha Mafinga fire, October 2017 11,134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 337 ha Mafinga fire, October 2017 4,941 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
-
Mafinga where it started4,847 ha reached on 30 Sept1.2 %
-
107 ha reached on 30 Sept0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sept | 30.0 °C | 25 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Oct | 29.2 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Oct | 28.4 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 1.9 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 3 Oct | 28.2 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 2.2 mm | Low 10 |
| 4 Oct | 30.3 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Oct | 30.2 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Oct | 32.4 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Oct | 31.8 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Oct | 32.9 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Oct | 32.3 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 10 Oct | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Oct after | 31.2 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Oct after | 30.9 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Oct after | 31.2 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 38 |
| 14 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Oct after | 30.3 °C | 26 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Oct after | 31.2 °C | 21 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Oct after | 29.7 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Oct after | 30.1 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 38 |
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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.6 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 · 73Every 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 Mafinga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2026 to 10 October 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2026 to 9 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,919 hectares (49.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mafinga (4,847 ha, 1.2 %); Chama (107 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Mafinga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 10 Oct 2026, 10:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 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 Zambia (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Chama → Mafinga.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 October 2026 to 9 October 2026. 73 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.