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Lukulu fire, 6 September 2019 Lukulu

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2019, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2019 in Lukulu, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,352 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 26 in Zambia in 2019, of 243.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lukulu · 2024Lukulu · 2019Kaoma · 2022Kaoma · 2025

Burnt area
13,352ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
6 Sept 2019 – 21 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Sept
2019
Heat detections
617
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
634MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept21 Sept
22 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2019 · 395 MW · 37 7 Sept 2019 · 1,001 MW · 64 8 Sept 2019 · 30 MW · 7 9 Sept 2019 · 125 MW · 19 10 Sept 2019 · 326 MW · 23 11 Sept 2019 · 2,021 MW · 66 12 Sept 2019 · 2,733 MW · 56 13 Sept 2019 · 369 MW · 43 14 Sept 2019 · 208 MW · 42 15 Sept 2019 · 819 MW · 39 16 Sept 2019 · 82 MW · 32 17 Sept 2019 · 995 MW · 45 18 Sept 2019 · 639 MW · 48 19 Sept 2019 · 241 MW · 49 20 Sept 2019 · 342 MW · 23 21 Sept 2019 · 374 MW · 16 22 Sept 2019 · 77 MW · 8
6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 21 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

36°high
60km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.4% of the area of London (134 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. Lukulu where it started
    13,426 ha
    1.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
6 Sept 34.3 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 30.1 °C 17 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
8 Sept 23.4 °C 27 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 26.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Sept 29.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept 33.1 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 33.7 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept 36.1 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 35.8 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Sept 35.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept 34.1 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Sept 34.2 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
18 Sept 33.2 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Sept 34.2 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Sept 33.9 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept 33.9 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Sept after 34.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Sept after 35.3 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Sept after 36.0 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Sept after 33.9 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
26 Sept after 28.5 °C 30 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept after 30.0 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept after 31.9 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept after 34.8 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Sept after 34.9 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Oct after 34.3 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2019
After · 28 Sept 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 0Every 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 Lukulu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2019 and 21 September 2019: 16 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,352 hectares (133.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lukulu (13,426 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 September 2019 → 21 September 2019.
  2. Start date: 30 August 2019 → 6 September 2019.
  3. Last day with fire: 21 September 2019 → 28 September 2019.
  4. Start date: 6 September 2019 → 30 August 2019.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2020, 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.