How long did the Lufwanyama fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2023 to 14 August 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2023 to 7 August 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,043 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lufwanyama (3,064 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 29 Jul 2023 – 14 Aug 2023

Lufwanyama fire, 29 July 2023 Lufwanyama

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2023, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2023 in Lufwanyama, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 81th largest in Copperbelt since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 158 in Zambia in 2023, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lufwanyama · 2026 Lufwanyama · 2026 Lufwanyama · 2026 Lufwanyama · 2019

Burnt area: 3,043ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 29 Jul 2023 – 14 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Jul; 2023
Heat detections: 90; in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 139MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul14 Aug

Play back 10 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 3 Aug 5 Aug 7 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

52km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 60 ha in 2016, 578 ha in 2018, 99 ha in 2019, 1,076 ha in 2020, 895 ha in 2021, 1,278 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,968 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

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

Lufwanyama where it started

3,064 ha reached on 29 Jul

0.3 %

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 area2.0 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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	Danger (FWI)
29 Jul	28.8 °C	20 %	22 km/h	High 34
30 Jul	30.0 °C	17 %	28 km/h	High 36
31 Jul	29.6 °C	24 %	26 km/h	High 38
1 Aug	27.7 °C	26 %	39 km/h	Very high 39
2 Aug	25.3 °C	29 %	52 km/h	Very high 42
3 Aug	24.7 °C	30 %	42 km/h	High 36
4 Aug	23.6 °C	30 %	34 km/h	High 33
5 Aug	25.2 °C	26 %	33 km/h	High 34
6 Aug	26.6 °C	31 %	38 km/h	High 35
7 Aug	26.0 °C	27 %	34 km/h	High 34
8 Aug	25.6 °C	29 %	32 km/h	High 33
9 Aug	27.1 °C	23 %	33 km/h	High 37
10 Aug	25.0 °C	26 %	38 km/h	High 35
11 Aug	26.0 °C	26 %	30 km/h	High 36
12 Aug	26.0 °C	25 %	27 km/h	High 35
13 Aug	26.7 °C	20 %	27 km/h	High 36
14 Aug	28.7 °C	26 %	30 km/h	High 36
15 Aug after	30.6 °C	25 %	27 km/h	High 36
16 Aug after	30.6 °C	24 %	36 km/h	Very high 38
17 Aug after	29.0 °C	28 %	34 km/h	High 37
18 Aug after	29.4 °C	25 %	32 km/h	High 36
19 Aug after	29.9 °C	20 %	30 km/h	High 38
20 Aug after	31.5 °C	19 %	30 km/h	Very high 40
21 Aug after	32.9 °C	19 %	24 km/h	Very high 41
22 Aug after	33.6 °C	17 %	30 km/h	Very high 43
23 Aug after	32.4 °C	16 %	33 km/h	Very high 43
24 Aug after	32.6 °C	19 %	38 km/h	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jul 2023

After · 21 Aug 2023

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 29 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 130 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 65: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak130 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM10186 µg/m³

Optical depth0.93

WHO 15

28 Jul31 Jul3 Aug6 Aug9 Aug

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 · 90Every 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 Lufwanyama fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2023 to 14 August 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2023 to 7 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,043 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lufwanyama (3,064 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 7 August 2023 → 14 August 2023.
26 October 2026 Start date: 30 July 2023 → 29 July 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.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 July 2023 to 7 August 2023. 90 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