Chitipa fire, 10 August 2025 Chitipa, Rumphi
The fire started on 10 August 2025 in Chitipa, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,515 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 89th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 418 with a page). Number 20 in Malawi in 2025, of 76.
- Burnt area
- 2,515ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 10 Aug 2025 – 11 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 101
- in a single hotspot: 160 MW
- Energy released
- 2.3GW
- sum of detected power
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
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,780 ha in 2016, 751 ha in 2017, 660 ha in 2018, 220 ha in 2019, 136 ha in 2020, 269 ha in 2023, 1,374 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,449 ha that had burned before.
- 1,374 ha Chitipa fire, July 2024 2,977 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,182 ha Chitipa fire, July 2016 7,693 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 742 ha Chitipa fire, August 2017 2,199 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 596 ha Chitipa fire, July 2016 1,594 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 556 ha Chitipa fire, August 2018 3,635 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 269 ha Chitipa fire, July 2023 1,127 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 220 ha Rumphi fire, August 2019 3,093 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 136 ha Chitipa fire, August 2020 2,802 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Chitipa where it started2,277 ha reached on 10 Aug0.5 %
-
257 ha reached on 10 Aug0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 11 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 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 · 101Every 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 Chitipa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2025 and 11 August 2025: 2 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 2,515 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chitipa (2,277 ha, 0.5 %); Rumphi (257 ha, 0.0 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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
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
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.