How long did the Kamanjab fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 July 2026 and 6 July 2026: 3 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 2,084 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kamanjab (2,099 ha, 0.1 %).

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 · 2026-07-04 → 2026-07-06

Kamanjab fire, July 2026 Kamanjab

Out · last detection 5 Jul 2026, 23:44 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2026 in Kamanjab, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 61th largest in Kunene since 2016 (of 62 with a page). Number 142 in Namibia in 2026, of 153.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 2,084ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 4 Jul 2026 – 6 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; constituencies
Started on: 4 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 18; in a single hotspot: 5 MW
Energy released: 33MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul6 Jul

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

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2021.

30 ha Kamanjab fire, August 2021 3,621 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Kamanjab where it started

2,099 ha reached on 5 Jul

0.1 %

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.

↔

Before · 27 Jun 2026

After · 13 Jul 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1014 µg/m³

Optical depth0.18

23456789

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 18Every 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 Kamanjab fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 July 2026 and 6 July 2026: 3 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 2,084 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kamanjab (2,099 ha, 0.1 %).
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 ↗

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 really happened?

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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