Luangwa fire, 23 September 2025 Luangwa
The fire started on 23 September 2025 in Luangwa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,175 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 70th largest in Lusaka since 2016 (of 79 with a page). Number 242 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,175ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 23 Sept 2025 – 14 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 88
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 23MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 163 ha in 2017, 749 ha in 2018, 1,549 ha in 2020, 966 ha in 2021, 210 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,585 ha that had burned before.
- 1,549 ha Luangwa fire, September 2020 3,721 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 966 ha Luangwa fire, September 2021 5,027 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 749 ha Luangwa fire, August 2018 3,939 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 163 ha Luangwa fire, September 2017 3,584 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
-
Luangwa where it started3,196 ha reached on 25 Sept0.8 %
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 2025Inside 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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Sept | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 26 Sept | 31.2 °C | 30 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Sept | 31.8 °C | 34 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Sept | 35.8 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Sept | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Sept | 32.4 °C | 38 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Oct | 29.5 °C | 39 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Oct | 31.1 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 3 Oct | 32.4 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Oct | 29.5 °C | 30 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Oct | 30.2 °C | 30 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Oct | 33.2 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Oct | 36.1 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 8 Oct | 35.8 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 9 Oct | 34.8 °C | 26 % | 49 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 50 |
| 10 Oct | 34.1 °C | 29 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Oct | 35.8 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Oct | 37.3 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 13 Oct | 38.1 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Oct | 36.5 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Oct after | 36.4 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 16 Oct after | 37.4 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 17 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 16 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 24 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 88Every 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 Luangwa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2025 to 14 October 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2025 to 7 October 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,175 hectares (31.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Luangwa (3,196 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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.
- Last day with fire: 7 October 2025 → 14 October 2025.
- Start date: 25 September 2025 → 23 September 2025.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2025 to 7 October 2025. 88 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.