How long did the Chitambo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2020 to 17 September 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2020 to 10 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,600 hectares (86.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chitambo (8,657 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 23.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2020-08-30 → 2020-09-17

Chitambo fire, 30 August 2020 Chitambo

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2020, 12:15 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2020 in Chitambo, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,600 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 68th largest in Central since 2016 (of 401 with a page). Number 44 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chitambo · 2018 Chitambo · 2021 Chitambo · 2025 Chitambo · 2023

Burnt area: 8,600ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 30 Aug 2020 – 17 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 291; in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 263MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug17 Sept

Play back 17 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 16 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

23°high

53km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,004 ha in 2016, 1,896 ha in 2017, 344 ha in 2018, 827 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,030 ha that had burned before.

81 ha Chitambo fire, September 2018 3,793 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (86 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

Chitambo where it started

8,657 ha reached on 30 Aug

0.7 %

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	Danger (FWI)
2 Sept	23.3 °C	36 %	53 km/h	High 36
3 Sept	22.1 °C	44 %	44 km/h	High 29
4 Sept	21.7 °C	22 %	40 km/h	High 32
5 Sept	20.9 °C	32 %	38 km/h	High 31
6 Sept	21.2 °C	37 %	40 km/h	High 29
7 Sept	22.8 °C	31 %	38 km/h	High 29
8 Sept	22.4 °C	32 %	42 km/h	High 30
9 Sept	21.6 °C	30 %	40 km/h	High 30
10 Sept	22.7 °C	30 %	39 km/h	High 30
11 Sept	22.5 °C	34 %	46 km/h	High 33
12 Sept	22.4 °C	34 %	47 km/h	High 34
13 Sept	24.3 °C	39 %	45 km/h	High 33
14 Sept	25.4 °C	35 %	36 km/h	High 29
15 Sept	27.5 °C	29 %	41 km/h	High 32
16 Sept	28.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	High 34
17 Sept	29.2 °C	25 %	38 km/h	High 36
18 Sept after	26.9 °C	30 %	48 km/h	Very high 41
19 Sept after	26.1 °C	30 %	42 km/h	High 37
20 Sept after	26.7 °C	27 %	42 km/h	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Aug 2020

After · 24 Sept 2020

Before After

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 · 291Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chitambo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2020 to 17 September 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2020 to 10 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,600 hectares (86.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chitambo (8,657 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 23.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 10 September 2020 → 17 September 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 2 September 2020 → 30 August 2020.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2020 to 10 September 2020. 291 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.

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.

Where it burned