Burned area
satellite only13,599ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZM · Zambia · –
Kasempa fire, 20 July 2026 Mufumbwe, Kasempa
Out · last detection 29 Jul 2026, 11:45 UTC
The fire started on 20 July 2026 in Kasempa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,599 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 66 in Zambia in 2026, of 621.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only10days
20 Jul 2026 to 29 Jul 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 29 Jul 2026, 11:45 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Jul 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only339
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 113 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only2,433MW
Total radiative power on 26 July 2026; hotspots that day: 142.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 26 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model40.3FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Jul 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model28.9°C · 14% RH
High of 28.9 °C and minimum humidity of 14% on 21 July 2026; gusts of 47 km/h on 25 July 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 13,599 ha
- Dates
- 20 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
- Name
- Kasempa
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kasempa-2026-07-8?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire kasempa-2026-07-8.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-20 | 1 | 11 | 28 | 5.8 | 16 | 11 | 29.5 | 0 | 40.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-21 | 4 | 17 | 28.9 | 7.2 | 14 | 9 | 25.2 | 0 | 38.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-22 | 34 | 607 | 28.9 | 7.7 | 18 | 11.6 | 27.7 | 0 | 41.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-23 | 29 | 268 | 28.8 | 10.4 | 24 | 12.4 | 28.4 | 0 | 40.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-24 | 31 | 369 | 28.1 | 10.3 | 24 | 13.9 | 33.8 | 0 | 41.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-25 | 46 | 534 | 26.9 | 10.7 | 24 | 20 | 47.2 | 0 | 46.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-26 | 142 | 2,433 | 25.6 | 10.2 | 30 | 16 | 39.2 | 0 | 38.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-27 | 33 | 213 | 25.8 | 9.9 | 23 | 12.8 | 32.8 | 0 | 35.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-28 | 18 | 90 | 27.2 | 7.7 | 20 | 10.4 | 27.4 | 0 | 34.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-29 | 1 | 4 | 28.4 | 9.2 | 19 | 11.9 | 31.7 | 0 | 37.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-07-30 | 0 | 0 | 28.3 | 8.8 | 17 | 10.9 | 28.1 | 0 | 38 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-07-31 | 0 | 0 | 27.9 | 9.5 | 18 | 14.5 | 37.1 | 0 | 41.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-01 | 0 | 0 | 26.5 | 10 | 20 | 16.1 | 40.3 | 0 | 43.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-02 | 0 | 0 | 25.7 | 9.2 | 22 | 13.2 | 33.8 | 0 | 40.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-03 | 0 | 0 | 26.6 | 7.2 | 20 | 10.9 | 30.2 | 0 | 38.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-04 | 0 | 0 | 27.4 | 8.1 | 18 | 11.7 | 31.7 | 0 | 39.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-05 | 0 | 0 | 27.7 | 8.6 | 21 | 12.1 | 32.4 | 0 | 40 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-06 | 0 | 0 | 27.3 | 10.3 | 19 | 11.8 | 32 | 0 | 39.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-07 | 0 | 0 | 28.5 | 9.6 | 17 | 13.2 | 29.5 | 0 | 41.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-08-08 | 0 | 0 | 27.9 | 10.7 | 22 | 14 | 32 | 0 | 42.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 13,599ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 20 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 339
- in a single hotspot: 113 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 455MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Jul29 Jul
29 Jul 2026
How it evolved, day by day
20 Jul
22 Jul
24 Jul
26 Jul
28 Jul
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
29°high
47km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,451 ha in 2016, 6,959 ha in 2017, 6,353 ha in 2018, 1,511 ha in 2019, 6,540 ha in 2020, 4,226 ha in 2021, 1,149 ha in 2022, 2,717 ha in 2023, 1,206 ha in 2024, 3,933 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,335 ha that had burned before.
- 5,936 ha Mufumbwe fire, October 2018 12,508 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,310 ha Mufumbwe fire, September 2017 24,460 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,276 ha Mufumbwe fire, September 2020 4,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,636 ha Mufumbwe fire, September 2025 34,546 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,707 ha Kasempa fire, September 2016 3,111 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,082 ha Mufumbwe fire, April 2024 5,135 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 433 ha Mufumbwe fire, July 2021 4,311 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 383 ha Kasempa fire, September 2020 3,897 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
-
13,572 ha reached on 21 Jul0.7 %
-
Kasempa where it started131 ha reached on 20 Jul0.0 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside 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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 91 % of the area in Zambia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jul | 28.0 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Jul | 28.9 °C | 14 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Jul | 28.9 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 23 Jul | 28.8 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 24 Jul | 28.1 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Jul | 26.9 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 26 Jul | 25.6 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 27 Jul | 25.8 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 28 Jul | 27.2 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Jul | 28.4 °C | 19 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Jul after | 28.3 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 31 Jul after | 27.9 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Aug after | 25.7 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Aug after | 26.6 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Aug after | 27.3 °C | 19 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 7 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Jul 2026
After · 5 Aug 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 27 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM1088 µg/m³
Optical depth0.52
WHO 15
18 Jul21 Jul24 Jul27 Jul30 Jul
Good
Fair
Moderate
Poor
Very poor
Extremely poor
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 · 339Every 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
- 12,508 haMufumbwe23 October 2018 · 9 days · 2 km away
- 24,460 haMufumbwe13 September 2017 · 26 days · 10 km away
- 34,546 haMufumbwe2 September 2025 · 15 days · 17 km away
- 12,869 haMufumbwe2 September 2023 · 12 days · 22 km away
- 25,793 haMufumbwe5 October 2022 · 15 days · 24 km away
- 22,416 haMufumbwe18 October 2026 · 9 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kasempa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 July 2026 and 29 July 2026: 10 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 13,599 hectares (136.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mufumbwe (13,572 ha, 0.7 %); Kasempa (131 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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
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.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 339 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 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.