How long did the Lavushimanda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 October 2026 to 25 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,469 hectares (154.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lavushimanda (8,943 ha, 0.6 %); Chitambo (6,639 ha, 0.6 %).

Is the Lavushimanda fire still active?

No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2026-10-06 → 2026-10-25

Lavushimanda fire, 6 October 2026 Lavushimanda, Chitambo

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2026 in Lavushimanda, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,469 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 53th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 520 with a page). Number 56 in Zambia in 2026, of 620.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lavushimanda · 2025 Chitambo · 2022 Lavushimanda · 2026 Chitambo · 2026

Burnt area: 15,469ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 6 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 6 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 354; in a single hotspot: 170 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 202MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct25 Oct

Play back 25 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 11 Oct 15 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high

55km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 640 ha in 2016, 1,858 ha in 2017, 576 ha in 2018, 1,631 ha in 2020, 46 ha in 2022, 948 ha in 2023, 955 ha in 2024, 1,855 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,753 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (155 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

Lavushimanda where it started

8,943 ha reached on 7 Oct

0.6 %
Chitambo

6,639 ha reached on 7 Oct

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 2025

Built-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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
6 Oct	29.0 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
7 Oct	31.6 °C	29 %	31 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 8
8 Oct	30.9 °C	31 %	41 km/h	1.7 mm	Low 11
9 Oct	30.4 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 16
10 Oct	30.6 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
11 Oct	29.4 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 20
12 Oct	30.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
13 Oct	31.1 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Oct	30.8 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Oct	30.9 °C	21 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Oct	30.6 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
17 Oct	30.2 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
18 Oct	31.1 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
19 Oct	32.4 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Oct	34.5 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Oct	34.8 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
22 Oct	35.7 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Oct	36.0 °C	16 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Oct	34.5 °C	19 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
25 Oct	31.2 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.7 mm	High 30
26 Oct after	31.3 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
27 Oct after	32.9 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Oct after	34.1 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Oct after	31.8 °C	31 %	36 km/h	1.0 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2026

After · 1 Nov 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM1044 µg/m³

Optical depth0.61

WHO 15

4567891011121314151617

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 · 354Every 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 Lavushimanda fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 October 2026 to 25 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,469 hectares (154.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lavushimanda (8,943 ha, 0.6 %); Chitambo (6,639 ha, 0.6 %).
Is the Lavushimanda fire still active?: No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

28 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 25 October 2026.
27 October 2026 Name: Chitambo → Lavushimanda.
25 October 2026 Area: 13,846 → 15,328 ha.

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.

Report an error

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 October 2026 to 25 October 2026. 354 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.

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