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Luwingu fire, 6 October 2022 Luwingu, Lupososhi

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2022, 11:46 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2022 in Luwingu, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,614 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 456th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 164 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupososhi · 2020

Burnt area
3,614ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
6 Oct 2022 – 16 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
6 Oct
2022
Heat detections
111
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
69MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct16 Oct
16 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 5 7 Oct 2022 · 18 MW · 1 8 Oct 2022 · 51 MW · 14 9 Oct 2022 · 129 MW · 18 10 Oct 2022 · 6 MW · 2 11 Oct 2022 · 32 MW · 8 12 Oct 2022 · 53 MW · 9 13 Oct 2022 · 188 MW · 22 14 Oct 2022 · 97 MW · 12 15 Oct 2022 · 104 MW · 11 16 Oct 2022 · 31 MW · 6
6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 14 Oct 16 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

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 840 ha in 2016, 1,026 ha in 2017, 139 ha in 2019, 79 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Luwingu where it started
    2,082 ha reached on 3 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Lupososhi
    1,555 ha reached on 2 Oct
    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 2020
Built-up area0.72 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.72 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (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 Oct 33.3 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Oct 32.3 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Oct 32.2 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Oct 31.4 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Oct 31.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Oct 32.7 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Oct 32.1 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Oct 32.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Oct 32.2 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Oct 32.4 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Oct 32.9 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Oct after 32.9 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Oct after 33.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Oct after 32.7 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Oct after 31.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Oct after 32.7 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Oct after 33.2 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Oct after 32.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
24 Oct after 33.9 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Oct after 31.7 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Oct after 34.8 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2022
After · 23 Oct 2022

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 · 111Every 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 Luwingu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2022 and 16 October 2022: 11 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 3,614 hectares (36.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luwingu (2,082 ha, 0.4 %); Lupososhi (1,555 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 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.

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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. 111 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.