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Kanchibiya fire, 24 August 2017 Kanchibiya

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2017, 12:04 UTC

The fire started on 24 August 2017 in Kanchibiya, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,280 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 125th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 520 with a page). Number 51 in Zambia in 2017, of 230.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kanchibiya · 2016Kanchibiya · 2021Kanchibiya · 2026Kanchibiya · 2020

Burnt area
8,280ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
24 Aug 2017 – 15 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
24 Aug
2017
Heat detections
461
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Aug15 Sept
15 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

24 Aug 2017 · 103 MW · 5 27 Aug 2017 · 10 MW · 2 28 Aug 2017 · 7 MW · 1 29 Aug 2017 · 703 MW · 9 30 Aug 2017 · 8 MW · 3 31 Aug 2017 · 365 MW · 18 1 Sept 2017 · 1,759 MW · 94 2 Sept 2017 · 949 MW · 69 3 Sept 2017 · 1,640 MW · 96 4 Sept 2017 · 665 MW · 24 5 Sept 2017 · 382 MW · 47 6 Sept 2017 · 300 MW · 27 7 Sept 2017 · 149 MW · 17 8 Sept 2017 · 56 MW · 13 9 Sept 2017 · 77 MW · 4 10 Sept 2017 · 218 MW · 15 12 Sept 2017 · 17 MW · 1 13 Sept 2017 · 100 MW · 8 14 Sept 2017 · 87 MW · 7 15 Sept 2017 · 1 MW · 1
24 Aug 29 Aug 1 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 14 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

32°high
50km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,607 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (83 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

  1. Kanchibiya where it started
    8,339 ha reached on 24 Aug
    1.0 %

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 area2.9 ha
Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (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)
24 Aug 32.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Aug 31.0 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Aug 29.0 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Aug 29.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Aug 28.2 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Aug 26.9 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug 29.7 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug 30.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Sept 30.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Sept 28.8 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Sept 27.8 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Sept 27.9 °C 27 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Sept 28.9 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Sept 30.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Sept 29.4 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 30.2 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 31.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 31.0 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept 31.1 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept 30.4 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept 30.8 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 31.1 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 31.9 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept after 31.5 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Sept after 33.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Sept after 32.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Sept after 32.1 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Sept after 32.5 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Sept after 31.5 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Sept after 31.0 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Sept after 31.5 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Sept after 30.3 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Sept after 32.4 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Aug 2017
After · 22 Sept 2017

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 · 461Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kanchibiya fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 August 2017 to 15 September 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2017 to 9 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,280 hectares (82.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kanchibiya (8,339 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 September 2017 → 15 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 30 August 2017 → 24 August 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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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 30 August 2017 to 9 September 2017. 461 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.