How long did the Guinas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 October 2020 to 24 October 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2020 to 21 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 40,318 hectares (403.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Omuthiyagwiipundi (37,783 ha, 2.8 %); Guinas (2,769 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). It is not an official report.

NA · Namibia · 2020-10-07 → 2020-10-24

Guinas fire, 7 October 2020 Omuthiyagwiipundi, Guinas

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2020, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2020 in Guinas, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 40,318 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Oshikoto since 2016 (of 100 with a page). Number 2 in Namibia in 2020, of 146.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guinas · 2020 Omuthiyagwiipundi · 2021 Guinas · 2020 Omuthiyagwiipundi · 2021

Burnt area: 40,318ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 7 Oct 2020 – 24 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; constituencies
Started on: 7 Oct; 2020
Heat detections: 2,096; in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start: 68; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct24 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 16 Oct 19 Oct 22 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

53km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 25% of the area of London (403 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

Omuthiyagwiipundi

37,783 ha reached on 8 Oct

2.8 %
Guinas where it started

2,769 ha reached on 7 Oct

0.3 %

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 area3.7 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.7 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
7 Oct	36.1 °C	7 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
8 Oct	36.7 °C	9 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
9 Oct	35.7 °C	7 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
10 Oct	35.3 °C	5 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
11 Oct	36.5 °C	6 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
12 Oct	37.9 °C	8 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
13 Oct	37.6 °C	13 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
14 Oct	37.7 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
15 Oct	38.4 °C	10 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
16 Oct	37.7 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
17 Oct	38.9 °C	7 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
18 Oct	38.6 °C	7 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 79
19 Oct	39.9 °C	5 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
20 Oct	40.6 °C	6 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
21 Oct	40.1 °C	7 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
22 Oct	39.1 °C	8 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
23 Oct	39.0 °C	9 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 79
24 Oct	39.3 °C	8 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
25 Oct after	40.6 °C	7 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
26 Oct after	38.9 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
27 Oct after	39.2 °C	7 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 81
28 Oct after	38.3 °C	13 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
29 Oct after	35.2 °C	21 %	30 km/h	1.9 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Sept 2020

After · 31 Oct 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 · 2,096Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guinas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 October 2020 to 24 October 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2020 to 21 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 40,318 hectares (403.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Omuthiyagwiipundi (37,783 ha, 2.8 %); Guinas (2,769 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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: 21 October 2020 → 24 October 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 8 October 2020 → 7 October 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 October 2020 to 21 October 2020. 2,096 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.

Where it burned