How long did the Kalumbila fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2017 to 27 September 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2017 to 27 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,476 hectares (194.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kalumbila (13,854 ha, 0.8 %); Mwinilunga (5,785 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.

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 · 2017-09-07 → 2017-09-27

Kalumbila fire, September 2017 Kalumbila, Mwinilunga

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 22:46 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2017 in Kalumbila, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,476 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 287 with a page). Number 19 in Zambia in 2017, of 230.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kalumbila · 2018 Kalumbila · 2025 Mwinilunga · 2025 Mwinilunga · 2024

Burnt area: 19,476ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 7 Sept 2017 – 27 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 7 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 804; in a single hotspot: 266 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 572MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept27 Sept

Play back 27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 25 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

35°high

49km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,373 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (195 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

Kalumbila where it started

13,854 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.8 %
Mwinilunga

5,785 ha reached on 13 Sept

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 Sept	32.4 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
8 Sept	32.2 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
9 Sept	32.6 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Sept	33.3 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Sept	32.7 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
12 Sept	33.1 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
13 Sept	32.9 °C	13 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
14 Sept	32.9 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
15 Sept	33.3 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Sept	32.9 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
17 Sept	33.8 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Sept	34.6 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
19 Sept	34.3 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
20 Sept	33.9 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
21 Sept	33.5 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
22 Sept	33.7 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
23 Sept	33.6 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
24 Sept	34.3 °C	15 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
25 Sept	34.4 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
26 Sept	34.6 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
27 Sept	33.4 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Sept after	35.2 °C	14 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
29 Sept after	33.5 °C	17 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Sept after	31.7 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 Oct after	33.0 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
2 Oct after	33.4 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Oct after	34.3 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Oct after	34.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
5 Oct after	33.2 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Oct after	31.3 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Oct after	33.3 °C	29 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Aug 2017

After · 4 Oct 2017

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 · 804Every 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 Kalumbila fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2017 to 27 September 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2017 to 27 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,476 hectares (194.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kalumbila (13,854 ha, 0.8 %); Mwinilunga (5,785 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 14 September 2017 → 7 September 2017.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 September 2017 to 27 September 2017. 804 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 2015, 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 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