How long did the Lunte fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2026 to 18 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,604 hectares (46.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lunte (4,632 ha, 0.6 %).

Is the Lunte fire still active?

No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 11:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2026-10-08 → 2026-10-25

Lunte fire, 8 October 2026 Lunte

Dying down · last detection 24 Oct 2026, 11:34 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2026 in Lunte, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,604 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 280th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 629 with a page). Number 263 in Zambia in 2026, of 616.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lunte · 2016 Mpulungu · 2025 Lunte · 2020 Lunte · 2025

Is it still active?

No detections since 24 Oct 2026, 11:34 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 4,604ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 8 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 53; in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 85MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct25 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 23 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

55km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,014 ha in 2016, 728 ha in 2017, 588 ha in 2019, 360 ha in 2020, 2,307 ha in 2021, 673 ha in 2022, 75 ha in 2023, 739 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,343 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

4,632 ha reached on 13 Oct

0.6 %

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
8 Oct	31.0 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Oct	30.6 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Oct	30.6 °C	26 %	50 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
11 Oct	29.8 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
12 Oct	30.8 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
13 Oct	30.7 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 29
14 Oct	30.8 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Oct	31.3 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Oct	31.0 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Oct	29.7 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Oct	30.8 °C	24 %	34 km/h	3.7 mm	Moderate 12
19 Oct	31.7 °C	31 %	28 km/h	4.3 mm	Low 5
20 Oct	32.5 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
21 Oct	32.8 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Oct	32.2 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Oct	33.9 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Oct	33.0 °C	17 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
25 Oct	31.4 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Oct 2026

After · 25 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 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM1072 µg/m³

Optical depth0.77

WHO 15

67891011121314151617

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 · 53Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2026 to 18 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,604 hectares (46.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lunte (4,632 ha, 0.6 %).
Is the Lunte fire still active?: No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 11:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 8 October 2026 to 18 October 2026. 53 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.