Karonga fire, 18 October 2023 Karonga
The fire started on 18 October 2023 in Karonga, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,756 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 156th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 420 with a page). Number 14 in Malawi in 2023, of 35.
- Burnt area
- 1,756ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 18 Oct 2023 – 25 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Oct
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 78
- in a single hotspot: 39 MW
- Energy released
- 826MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 831 ha in 2016, 562 ha in 2017, 902 ha in 2019, 4 ha in 2020, 76 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,130 ha that had burned before.
- 902 ha Karonga fire, October 2019 2,176 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 747 ha Karonga fire, October 2016 1,517 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 562 ha Karonga fire, October 2017 2,050 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 84 ha Karonga fire, October 2016 1,968 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 76 ha Karonga fire, October 2022 1,140 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Karonga fire, October 2020 1,606 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Karonga where it started1,767 ha reached on 15 Oct0.5 %
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.
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 · 78Every 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 Karonga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2023 and 25 October 2023: 8 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 1,756 hectares (17.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karonga (1,767 ha, 0.5 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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
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
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.