How long did the Luano fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2026 to 24 September 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2026 to 21 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,986 hectares (49.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Luano (5,020 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2026-09-10 → 2026-09-24

Luano fire, 10 September 2026 Luano

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2026, 11:49 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2026 in Luano, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,986 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 156th largest in Central since 2016 (of 401 with a page). Number 226 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luano · 2026 Luano · 2026 Luano · 2026 Luano · 2026

Burnt area: 4,986ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 10 Sept 2026 – 24 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 10 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 63; in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 63MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept24 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 20 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

32°high

49km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 226 ha in 2016, 670 ha in 2020, 912 ha in 2022, 872 ha in 2023, 432 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,217 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (50 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

Luano where it started

5,020 ha reached on 10 Sept

0.5 %

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 area0.10 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of 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)
10 Sept	26.3 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Sept	28.6 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Sept	30.6 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
13 Sept	30.4 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Sept	31.5 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Sept	31.2 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Sept	31.4 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Sept	31.1 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Sept	30.0 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Sept	29.0 °C	30 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
20 Sept	30.5 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Sept	30.3 °C	24 %	39 km/h	1.7 mm	High 27
22 Sept	28.7 °C	38 %	45 km/h	1.2 mm	High 23
23 Sept	30.2 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Sept	31.0 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Sept after	30.6 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Sept after	31.4 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Sept after	33.7 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Sept after	34.5 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Sept after	34.0 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Sept after	24.9 °C	48 %	49 km/h	0.8 mm	High 27
1 Oct after	22.0 °C	50 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
2 Oct after	19.5 °C	58 %	28 km/h	2.6 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Sept 2026

After · 1 Oct 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 17 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM1066 µg/m³

Optical depth0.89

WHO 15

89101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 63Every 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 Luano fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2026 to 24 September 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2026 to 21 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,986 hectares (49.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Luano (5,020 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 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

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 10 September 2026 to 21 September 2026. 63 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.

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