How long did the Kasama fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2021 to 15 September 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2021 to 8 September 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,517 hectares (65.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kasama (6,557 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.

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.

ZM · Zambia · 2021-08-22 → 2021-09-15

Kasama fire, 22 August 2021 Kasama

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2021, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2021 in Kasama, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,517 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 156th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 58 in Zambia in 2021, of 213.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasama · 2017 Kasama · 2019 Luwingu · 2017 Luwingu · 2021

Burnt area: 6,517ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 22 Aug 2021 – 15 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 22 Aug; 2021
Heat detections: 292; in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 164MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug15 Sept

Play back 15 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 27 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 8 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

31°high

55km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,611 ha in 2016, 3,358 ha in 2017, 1,881 ha in 2018, 1,077 ha in 2019, 3,026 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,796 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

Kasama where it started

6,557 ha reached on 22 Aug

0.6 %

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 2020

Built-up area3.8 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.8 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
22 Aug	30.1 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
23 Aug	28.3 °C	39 %	44 km/h	0.5 mm	High 32
24 Aug	29.3 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Aug	29.5 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Aug	29.4 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Aug	28.8 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Aug	31.3 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Aug	31.0 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
30 Aug	29.7 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
31 Aug	29.6 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Sept	30.0 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Sept	29.5 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
3 Sept	29.6 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Sept	30.0 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Sept	29.8 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Sept	29.9 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Sept	30.8 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Sept	30.0 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Sept	30.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Sept	28.0 °C	25 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
11 Sept	24.0 °C	37 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
12 Sept	28.1 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Sept	30.2 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Sept	31.0 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Sept	31.3 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Sept after	33.3 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Sept after	33.3 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Sept after	32.2 °C	20 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Sept after	30.0 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Sept after	30.4 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Sept after	32.4 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Sept after	30.7 °C	20 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
23 Sept after	29.9 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
24 Sept after	30.1 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Sept after	30.6 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Aug 2021

After · 22 Sept 2021

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.

Detections table · 292Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kasama fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2021 to 15 September 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2021 to 8 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,517 hectares (65.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kasama (6,557 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 September 2021 → 15 September 2021.
26 October 2026 Start date: 29 August 2021 → 22 August 2021.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 29 August 2021 to 8 September 2021. 292 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned