Chipili fire, 1 September 2021 Chipili
The fire started on 1 September 2021 in Chipili, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,910 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 224th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 534 with a page). Number 65 in Zambia in 2021, of 213.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,910ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 1 Sept 2021 – 9 Sept 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 1 Sept
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 229
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 265MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,934 ha in 2016, 2,958 ha in 2017, 2,143 ha in 2018, 4,835 ha in 2019, 3,923 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,887 ha that had burned before.
- 4,835 ha Chipili fire, August 2019 81,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,481 ha Chipili fire, September 2020 28,968 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,143 ha Chipili fire, August 2018 6,231 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,628 ha Chipili fire, September 2016 4,103 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 407 ha Chipili fire, August 2017 20,350 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 363 ha Chipili fire, August 2016 4,742 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 125 ha Kawambwa fire, August 2017 98,647 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
-
Chipili where it started5,943 ha1.4 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 950 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
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.
Detections table · 0Every 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 Chipili fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2021 and 9 September 2021: 9 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 5,910 hectares (59.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chipili (5,943 ha, 1.4 %).
- 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 16 September 2021 → 9 September 2021.
- Start date: 29 August 2021 → 1 September 2021.
- Last day with fire: 9 September 2021 → 16 September 2021.
- Start date: 1 September 2021 → 29 August 2021.
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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.