Kapako fire, 10 August 2023 Kapako, Rundu Rural West
The fire started on 10 August 2023 in Kapako, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,882 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Kavango West since 2016 (of 152 with a page). The largest in Namibia in 2023, of 111.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 34,882ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 10 Aug 2023 – 26 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- constituencies
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1,552
- in a single hotspot: 249 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 56 ha in 2016, 16,885 ha in 2017, 5,391 ha in 2018, 13,514 ha in 2019, 925 ha in 2020, 11,011 ha in 2021, 1,123 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 28,226 ha that had burned before.
- 13,514 ha Kapako fire, September 2019 31,877 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,145 ha Rundu Rural West fire, September 2021 9,228 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,122 ha Rundu Rural West fire, August 2017 9,064 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,895 ha Rundu Rural West fire, August 2017 21,488 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,096 ha Kapako fire, October 2017 3,758 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,344 ha Rundu Rural West fire, October 2018 17,533 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,217 ha Rundu Rural West fire, September 2021 2,890 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,821 ha Rundu Rural West fire, August 2017 3,788 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
-
Kapako where it started22,225 ha reached on 9 Aug3.6 %
-
12,842 ha reached on 10 Aug6.1 %
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 were about 0.34 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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 Aug | 28.2 °C | 20 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Aug | 27.7 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Aug | 28.9 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Aug | 29.7 °C | 16 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 14 Aug | 29.9 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Aug | 31.1 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 16 Aug | 31.3 °C | 11 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 17 Aug | 31.6 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Aug | 33.1 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 19 Aug | 32.7 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Aug | 33.8 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Aug | 34.5 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Aug | 34.4 °C | 11 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Aug | 34.4 °C | 8 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Aug | 33.9 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 25 Aug | 34.8 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 Aug | 30.9 °C | 9 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 27 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 9 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 28 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 25 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 29 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 30 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 31 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 12 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Sept after | 33.1 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 3 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 10 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
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 25 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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 · 1,552Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kapako fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2023 and 26 August 2023: 17 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 34,882 hectares (348.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kapako (22,225 ha, 3.6 %); Rundu Rural West (12,842 ha, 6.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class 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
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,552 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 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.