Kariba fire, 29 August 2025 Kariba
The fire started on 29 August 2025 in Kariba, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,378 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 54th largest in Mashonaland West since 2016 (of 824 with a page). Number 10 in Zimbabwe in 2025, of 150.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,378ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 29 Aug 2025 – 3 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 232
- in a single hotspot: 109 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 392MW
- 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
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,031 ha in 2016, 2,344 ha in 2017, 3,175 ha in 2018, 2,608 ha in 2019, 2,565 ha in 2020, 14 ha in 2021, 4,640 ha in 2022, 556 ha in 2023, 975 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,334 ha that had burned before.
- 4,640 ha Hurungwe fire, September 2022 33,783 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,131 ha Kariba fire, August 2018 5,961 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,608 ha Kariba fire, August 2019 11,221 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,565 ha Kariba fire, September 2020 5,282 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,344 ha Kariba fire, August 2017 5,505 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,031 ha Kariba fire, August 2016 3,493 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 975 ha Kariba fire, July 2024 1,908 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 556 ha Kariba fire, October 2023 1,121 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
-
Kariba where it started5,396 ha reached on 29 Aug0.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Aug | 33.3 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 31 Aug | 34.2 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Sept | 34.4 °C | 14 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Sept | 33.8 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 3 Sept | 33.0 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 5 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 7 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 18 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 8 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 9 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 10 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 24 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 12 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 13 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 20 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
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 3 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 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 · 232Every 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 · 6 km away
- 11,221 haKariba18 August 2019 · 4 days · 6 km away
- 13,417 haHurungwe29 August 2026 · 21 days · 11 km away
- 22,552 haHurungwe5 September 2016 · 11 days · 13 km away
- 11,838 haKariba16 September 2020 · 13 days · 15 km away
- 13,844 haHurungwe 17 October 2026 · 12 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kariba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2025 to 3 September 2025 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2025 to 3 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,378 hectares (53.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kariba (5,396 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 30 August 2025 → 29 August 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 August 2025 to 3 September 2025. 232 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.