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Chililabombwe fire, July 2019 Chililabombwe, Mushindano

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2019, 11:26 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2019 in Chililabombwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 79th largest in Copperbelt since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 233 in Zambia in 2019, of 243.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chililabombwe · 2026Chingola · 2026Sakania · 2019Kipushi · 2025

Burnt area
3,114ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
12 Jul 2019 – 21 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
12 Jul
2019
Heat detections
65
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
65MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul21 Jul
21 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2019 · 3 MW · 1 13 Jul 2019 · 10 MW · 3 14 Jul 2019 · 30 MW · 4 15 Jul 2019 · 312 MW · 28 16 Jul 2019 · 65 MW · 9 17 Jul 2019 · 35 MW · 3 18 Jul 2019 · 55 MW · 8 20 Jul 2019 · 7 MW · 1 21 Jul 2019 · 67 MW · 6
12 Jul 14 Jul 15 Jul 16 Jul 18 Jul 21 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

27°high
41km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,084 ha in 2017, 727 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,370 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Chililabombwe where it started
    3,131 ha reached on 7 Jul
    3.1 %
  2. Mushindano
    1 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area3.3 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.3 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 25.2 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jul 25.7 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul 26.2 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jul 25.3 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul 24.6 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jul 24.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Jul 24.5 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul 24.3 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul 26.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Jul 27.0 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul after 24.3 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jul after 24.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul after 25.6 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul after 27.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Jul after 26.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul after 24.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul after 25.4 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul after 26.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul after 26.6 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul after 26.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2019
After · 28 Jul 2019

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 · 65Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chililabombwe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 July 2019 and 21 July 2019: 10 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 3,114 hectares (31.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chililabombwe (3,131 ha, 3.1 %); Mushindano (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 65 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 2020, 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 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.