Mafinga fire, 6 October 2026 Mafinga, Chama
The fire started on 6 October 2026 in Mafinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,909 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 29th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 517 with a page). Number 33 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.
Compare with…
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
- 21,909ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 6 Oct 2026 – 24 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 6 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 470
- in a single hotspot: 70 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 358MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,389 ha in 2016, 11,313 ha in 2017, 2,695 ha in 2018, 8,688 ha in 2019, 2,581 ha in 2020, 4,416 ha in 2022, 6,854 ha in 2023, 4,316 ha in 2024, 6,773 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,296 ha that had burned before.
- 9,340 ha Mafinga fire, October 2016 21,255 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,143 ha Mafinga fire, October 2017 20,303 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,917 ha Mafinga fire, October 2019 13,496 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,807 ha Mafinga fire, October 2023 3,396 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,788 ha Mafinga fire, October 2023 3,124 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 857 ha Mafinga fire, October 2025 13,807 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 44 ha Mafinga fire, October 2023 3,621 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
-
Mafinga where it started21,559 ha reached on 6 Oct5.2 %
-
486 ha reached on 6 Oct0.0 %
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 were about 30 hectares of built-up land and about 1,800 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Oct | 29.9 °C | 25 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Oct | 30.1 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Oct | 30.4 °C | 21 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Oct | 29.5 °C | 27 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Oct | 29.7 °C | 25 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Oct | 29.2 °C | 29 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Oct | 29.2 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Oct | 29.0 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 14 Oct | 29.3 °C | 28 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Oct | 28.6 °C | 30 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Oct | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Oct | 28.8 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 18 Oct | 29.3 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Oct | 29.6 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Oct | 31.9 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 1.8 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Oct | 32.5 °C | 21 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Oct | 32.7 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 23 Oct | 33.2 °C | 13 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Oct | 31.0 °C | 19 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Oct after | 29.4 °C | 27 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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 · 470Every 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 · 15 days · 2 km away
- 13,496 haMafingaOctober 2019 · 13 days · 3 km away
- 20,303 haMafinga16 October 2017 · 10 days · 12 km away
- 13,807 haMafinga5 October 2025 · 26 days · 17 km away
- 7,306 haMafinga 12 October 2026 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 15,016 haMafingaSeptember 2025 · 30 days · 28 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 6 October 2026 to 24 October 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2026 to 18 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,909 hectares (219.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mafinga (21,559 ha, 5.2 %); Chama (486 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Mafinga 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 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 October 2026 to 18 October 2026. 470 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.
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.