Machinga fire, 20 September 2025 Machinga
The fire started on 20 September 2025 in Machinga, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,209 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 70th largest in Southern Region since 2016 (of 105 with a page). Number 58 in Malawi in 2025, of 76.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,209ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 20 Sept 2025 – 25 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 14
- in a single hotspot: 11 MW
- Average daily power
- 12MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 282 ha in 2017, 766 ha in 2018, 266 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,048 ha that had burned before.
- 766 ha Machinga fire, September 2018 5,724 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 266 ha Machinga fire, September 2021 1,832 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 189 ha Machinga fire, August 2017 1,264 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 93 ha Machinga fire, September 2017 3,110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Machinga where it started1,217 ha reached on 20 Sept0.3 %
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 2025Inside 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
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 19 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 14Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,724 haMachinga20 September 2018 · 4 days · 3 km away
- 1,832 haMachingaSeptember 2021 · 2 days · 4 km away
- 3,110 haMachinga15 September 2017 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 1,703 haMachinga9 September 2025 · 6 days · 6 km away
- 1,583 haMachingaAugust 2016 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 2,804 haMachinga25 September 2017 · 11 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Machinga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2025 and 25 September 2025: 6 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 1,209 hectares (12.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Machinga (1,217 ha, 0.3 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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.
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
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. 14 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.