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Chipili fire, 18 August 2016 Chipili, Lupososhi, Mansa

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2016, 11:20 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2016 in Chipili, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 76,625 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 4 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mansa · 2025Mansa · 2022Mansa · 2021Mansa · 2019

Burnt area
76,625ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
18 Aug 2016 – 8 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
18 Aug
2016
Heat detections
3,248
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug8 Sept
9 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2016 · 72 MW · 12 19 Aug 2016 · 142 MW · 16 20 Aug 2016 · 1,181 MW · 104 21 Aug 2016 · 508 MW · 61 22 Aug 2016 · 1,338 MW · 119 23 Aug 2016 · 1,207 MW · 132 24 Aug 2016 · 1,904 MW · 151 25 Aug 2016 · 752 MW · 77 26 Aug 2016 · 776 MW · 93 27 Aug 2016 · 2,053 MW · 126 28 Aug 2016 · 1,675 MW · 128 29 Aug 2016 · 3,533 MW · 255 30 Aug 2016 · 5,453 MW · 298 31 Aug 2016 · 4,279 MW · 314 1 Sept 2016 · 2,339 MW · 293 2 Sept 2016 · 1,114 MW · 121 3 Sept 2016 · 1,603 MW · 155 4 Sept 2016 · 2,236 MW · 143 5 Sept 2016 · 4,541 MW · 308 6 Sept 2016 · 1,376 MW · 108 7 Sept 2016 · 890 MW · 82 8 Sept 2016 · 1,304 MW · 97 9 Sept 2016 · 750 MW · 55
18 Aug 22 Aug 26 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
61km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 48% of the area of London (766 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. Chipili where it started
    42,916 ha
    10 %
  2. Lupososhi
    31,973 ha
    7.7 %
  3. Mansa
    1,693 ha
    0.2 %
  4. Chifunabuli
    572 ha
    0.2 %

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 2015
Built-up area64 ha
Residents≈ 6,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 64 hectares of built-up land and about 6,600 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
18 Aug 27.5 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug 28.7 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Aug 29.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Aug 30.8 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Aug 30.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Aug 30.2 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Aug 26.7 °C 31 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Aug 26.9 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Aug 27.2 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Aug 27.4 °C 27 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug 27.3 °C 26 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Aug 27.6 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Aug 27.7 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug 27.7 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Sept 27.5 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Sept 26.9 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 28.4 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Sept 29.5 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Sept 30.2 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept 30.2 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 30.6 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 31.8 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept after 31.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept after 31.7 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept after 31.1 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept after 30.0 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Sept after 30.7 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Sept after 31.1 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept after 31.5 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Sept after 32.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept after 33.3 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept after 33.7 °C 20 % 35 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.

Before · 11 Aug 2016
After · 15 Sept 2016

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 · 0Every 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 Chipili fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 August 2016 and 8 September 2016: 22 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 76,625 hectares (766.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Chipili (42,916 ha, 10 %); Lupososhi (31,973 ha, 7.7 %); Mansa (1,693 ha, 0.2 %); Chifunabuli (572 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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.