Hurungwe fire, 9 June 2025 Hurungwe, Kariba
The fire started on 9 June 2025 in Hurungwe, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,558 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 69th largest in Mashonaland West since 2016 (of 825 with a page). Number 12 in Zimbabwe in 2025, of 150.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,558ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 9 Jun 2025 – 13 Jun 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 9 Jun
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 193
- in a single hotspot: 44 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 401MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,365 ha in 2016, 1,859 ha in 2017, 2,549 ha in 2019, 46 ha in 2020, 1,512 ha in 2021, 3,158 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,087 ha that had burned before.
- 3,081 ha Hurungwe fire, September 2022 33,783 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,224 ha Hurungwe fire, May 2019 5,135 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,030 ha Hurungwe fire, June 2016 2,287 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 883 ha Hurungwe fire, October 2017 1,250 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 781 ha Hurungwe fire, May 2021 1,045 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 694 ha Hurungwe fire, August 2017 1,238 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 447 ha Kariba fire, October 2021 7,545 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 325 ha Kariba fire, August 2019 10,382 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
-
Hurungwe where it started3,698 ha reached on 9 Jun0.2 %
-
881 ha reached on 9 Jun0.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Jun | 25.5 °C | 20 % | 45 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Jun | 27.5 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Jun | 25.3 °C | 35 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Jun | 24.4 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Jun after | 21.7 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jun after | 23.2 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Jun after | 23.7 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Jun after | 25.1 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Jun after | 26.8 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Jun after | 27.7 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Jun after | 28.4 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Jun after | 28.1 °C | 22 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Jun after | 26.3 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 June 2025 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 193Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 33,783 haHurungwe18 September 2022 · 11 days · 9 km away
- 11,221 haKariba18 August 2019 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 22,552 haHurungwe5 September 2016 · 11 days · 13 km away
- 13,417 haHurungwe29 August 2026 · 21 days · 18 km away
- 11,838 haKariba16 September 2020 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 14,363 haHurungwe 17 October 2026 · 12 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Hurungwe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 June 2025 to 13 June 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 June 2025 to 12 June 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,558 hectares (45.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Hurungwe (3,698 ha, 0.2 %); Kariba (881 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 12 June 2025 → 13 June 2025.
- Start date: 10 June 2025 → 9 June 2025.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 June 2025 to 12 June 2025. 193 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 2025, 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 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.