How long did the Lunte fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2016 and 20 October 2016: 10 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 8,975 hectares (89.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lunte (9,040 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2016-10-11 → 2016-10-20

Lunte fire, 11 October 2016 Lunte

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2016, 11:33 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2016 in Lunte, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,975 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 96th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 47 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasama · 2026 Kasama · 2026 Lunte · 2026 Lunte · 2022

Burnt area: 8,975ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 11 Oct 2016 – 20 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 11 Oct; 2016
Heat detections: 274; in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 327MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct20 Oct

Play back 21 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 13 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

45km/h · peak gust

15%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?

It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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

Lunte where it started

9,040 ha reached on 6 Oct

1.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
11 Oct	33.1 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Oct	33.0 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
13 Oct	32.7 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
14 Oct	32.5 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
15 Oct	32.5 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
16 Oct	33.1 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Oct	33.6 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Oct	33.7 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
19 Oct	31.9 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
20 Oct	31.8 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Oct after	32.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
22 Oct after	33.2 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
23 Oct after	34.1 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
24 Oct after	34.1 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
25 Oct after	33.9 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
26 Oct after	33.2 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
27 Oct after	32.9 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Oct after	32.7 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
29 Oct after	33.0 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Oct after	31.8 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Oct 2016

After · 27 Oct 2016

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.

Detections table · 274Every 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 Lunte fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2016 and 20 October 2016: 10 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 8,975 hectares (89.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lunte (9,040 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 274 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.

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