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Lavushimanda fire, 31 August 2023 Lavushimanda

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2023, 11:26 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2023 in Lavushimanda, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,003 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 515th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 165 in Zambia in 2023, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chitambo · 2021Lavushimanda · 2020Lavushimanda · 2023Chitambo · 2026

Burnt area
3,003ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
31 Aug 2023 – 18 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2023
Heat detections
114
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
76MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2023 · 6 MW · 1 3 Sept 2023 · 52 MW · 9 5 Sept 2023 · 13 MW · 1 6 Sept 2023 · 9 MW · 2 7 Sept 2023 · 65 MW · 10 8 Sept 2023 · 268 MW · 19 9 Sept 2023 · 279 MW · 53 10 Sept 2023 · 70 MW · 10 11 Sept 2023 · 62 MW · 5 15 Sept 2023 · 11 MW · 2 18 Sept 2023 · 7 MW · 2
31 Aug 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 18 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
46km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 663 ha in 2018, 517 ha in 2019, 905 ha in 2020, 46 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,468 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

  1. Lavushimanda where it started
    3,021 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.2 %

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.

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)
7 Sept 30.3 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Sept 29.1 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Sept 27.9 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 28.7 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 30.8 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Sept 32.1 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 26.8 °C 38 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept 25.7 °C 37 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Sept 28.8 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept 31.0 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 31.9 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 29.6 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Sept after 30.0 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept after 31.1 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Sept after 31.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2023
After · 25 Sept 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 11 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1055 µg/m³
Optical depth0.86
567891011121314
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 · 114Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lavushimanda fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2023 to 18 September 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2023 to 11 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,003 hectares (30.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lavushimanda (3,021 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 September 2023 → 18 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 7 September 2023 → 31 August 2023.

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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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 7 September 2023 to 11 September 2023. 114 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.

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.