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Lukulu fire, 15 August 2023 Lukulu

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2023, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2023 in Lukulu, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,656 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 87th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 109 in Zambia in 2023, of 165.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lukulu · 2021Lukulu · 2025Lukulu · 2018Lukulu · 2021

Burnt area
3,656ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
15 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Aug
2023
Heat detections
235
in a single hotspot: 93 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
162MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug4 Sept
4 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2023 · 17 MW · 3 16 Aug 2023 · 4 MW · 1 18 Aug 2023 · 11 MW · 2 19 Aug 2023 · 62 MW · 4 20 Aug 2023 · 6 MW · 1 21 Aug 2023 · 4 MW · 1 22 Aug 2023 · 402 MW · 24 23 Aug 2023 · 269 MW · 19 24 Aug 2023 · 179 MW · 30 25 Aug 2023 · 778 MW · 42 26 Aug 2023 · 200 MW · 13 27 Aug 2023 · 52 MW · 9 28 Aug 2023 · 7 MW · 1 29 Aug 2023 · 72 MW · 9 30 Aug 2023 · 197 MW · 18 31 Aug 2023 · 209 MW · 12 1 Sept 2023 · 404 MW · 18 2 Sept 2023 · 193 MW · 18 3 Sept 2023 · 2 MW · 3 4 Sept 2023 · 159 MW · 7
15 Aug 19 Aug 22 Aug 25 Aug 28 Aug 31 Aug 3 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

35°high
62km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,307 ha in 2016, 1,742 ha in 2018, 503 ha in 2019, 144 ha in 2020, 2,186 ha in 2021, 789 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,500 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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
    3,673 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.4 %

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 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Aug 34.7 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Aug 34.2 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Aug 35.1 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Aug 34.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Aug 35.2 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Aug 35.1 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
28 Aug 28.8 °C 27 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Aug 27.9 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug 27.6 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug 29.4 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Sept 31.7 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 32.3 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Sept 33.3 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 33.3 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept after 32.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Sept after 33.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Sept after 34.5 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2023
After · 11 Sept 2023

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 31 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM1083 µg/m³
Optical depth0.75
202122232425262728293031
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 · 235Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 August 2023 to 4 September 2023 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2023 to 28 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,656 hectares (36.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lukulu (3,673 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 62 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 August 2023 → 4 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 22 August 2023 → 15 August 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.

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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 22 August 2023 to 28 August 2023. 235 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.