Mafinga fire, September 2019 Mafinga
The fire started on 27 September 2019 in Mafinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,496 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 66th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 25 in Zambia in 2019, of 243.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 13,496ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 27 Sept 2019 – 20 Oct 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 418
- in a single hotspot: 102 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 320MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 21 Oct.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,028 ha in 2016, 7,576 ha in 2017, 1,423 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,778 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Mafinga where it started13,578 ha reached on 27 Sept3.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Sept | 23.6 °C | 47 % | 21 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 28 Sept | 29.1 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 29 Sept | 29.3 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 30 Sept | 29.4 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 1 Oct | 29.3 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 3.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 2 Oct | 29.5 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Oct | 28.3 °C | 36 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Oct | 28.9 °C | 24 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Oct | 28.1 °C | 32 % | 49 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Oct | 28.4 °C | 33 % | 47 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 27 |
| 7 Oct | 29.2 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Oct | 29.8 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Oct | 31.4 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Oct | 29.8 °C | 31 % | 51 km/h | 1.9 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Oct | 28.3 °C | 33 % | 63 km/h | 2.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 12 Oct | 28.7 °C | 32 % | 51 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Oct | 29.8 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Oct | 30.1 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Oct | 29.1 °C | 35 % | 39 km/h | 4.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 16 Oct | 27.5 °C | 40 % | 39 km/h | 5.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 17 Oct | 26.2 °C | 49 % | 32 km/h | 9.1 mm | Very low 1 |
| 18 Oct | 28.2 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 1.5 mm | Very low 4 |
| 19 Oct | 28.1 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 9 |
| 20 Oct | 28.6 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 10 |
| 21 Oct after | 29.4 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 2.2 mm | Low 6 |
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.
Detections table · 418Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,255 haMafinga9 October 2016 · 22 days · 2 km away
- 21,909 haMafinga 6 October 2026 · 20 days · 3 km away
- 20,303 haMafinga9 October 2017 · 24 days · 10 km away
- 13,807 haMafinga28 September 2025 · 39 days · 19 km away
- 7,306 haMafinga 12 October 2026 · 13 days · 20 km away
- 15,016 haMafinga1 September 2025 · 38 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mafinga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2019 to 20 October 2019 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2019 to 15 October 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,496 hectares (135.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mafinga (13,578 ha, 3.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 15 October 2019 → 20 October 2019.
- Start date: 3 October 2019 → 27 September 2019.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 October 2019 to 15 October 2019. 418 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.
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.