Chembe fire, 18 July 2026 Chembe, Milengi, Mansa
The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Chembe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 64,353 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 27th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 12 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Chembe · 2018Chembe · 2020Chembe · 2016Chembe · 2021
- Burnt area
- 64,353ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 34days
- 18 Jul 2026 – 20 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 2,219
- in a single hotspot: 130 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 550MW
- 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
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22,867 ha in 2016, 21,451 ha in 2017, 26,494 ha in 2018, 20,414 ha in 2019, 25,635 ha in 2020, 20,662 ha in 2021, 16,566 ha in 2022, 20,188 ha in 2023, 13,305 ha in 2024, 20,725 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 59,315 ha that had burned before.
- 12,208 ha Chembe fire, July 2018 20,282 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,689 ha Chembe fire, August 2020 12,566 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,509 ha Chembe fire, July 2016 12,378 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,623 ha Chembe fire, August 2021 8,510 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,982 ha Chembe fire, August 2020 7,320 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,847 ha Chembe fire, July 2025 9,410 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,184 ha Chembe fire, August 2018 5,849 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,915 ha Chembe fire, August 2023 5,300 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
-
Chembe where it started62,293 ha reached on 16 Jul29 %
-
2,079 ha reached on 29 Jul0.3 %
-
215 ha reached on 20 Jul0.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 89 hectares of built-up land and about 17,000 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Jul | 24.6 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 17 Jul | 24.5 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Jul | 24.7 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Jul | 25.8 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Jul | 27.1 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Jul | 28.0 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Jul | 27.7 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Jul | 27.4 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Jul | 27.0 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 25 Jul | 26.4 °C | 34 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Jul | 25.1 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Jul | 25.1 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Jul | 26.4 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 29 Jul | 27.0 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Jul | 27.0 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 31 Jul | 26.5 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Aug | 24.6 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Aug | 24.1 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Aug | 24.7 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Aug | 25.8 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Aug | 26.0 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Aug | 26.5 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Aug | 27.3 °C | 38 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Aug | 26.8 °C | 40 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Aug | 27.7 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 10 Aug | 29.9 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Aug | 29.5 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Aug | 28.6 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Aug | 26.4 °C | 40 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Aug | 24.7 °C | 41 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Aug | 24.8 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Aug | 24.8 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Aug | 25.8 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Aug | 26.9 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Aug | 26.5 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Aug | 26.6 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 29 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 23 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 24 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 32 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 41 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 28 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 40 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 29 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 37 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 31 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Sept after | 29.4 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 3 Sept after | 29.9 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Sept after | 28.7 °C | 39 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Sept after | 28.7 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
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 20 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 115 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 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 · 2,219Every 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 Chembe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 20 August 2026: 34 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 64,353 hectares (643.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chembe (62,293 ha, 29 %); Milengi (2,079 ha, 0.3 %); Mansa (215 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 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; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,219 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.
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.