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Mansa fire, 21 August 2016 Mansa

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2016, 11:45 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2016 in Mansa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,356 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 460th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 198 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mansa · 2024Mansa · 2016Mansa · 2023Mwense · 2026

Burnt area
3,356ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
21 Aug 2016 – 28 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
21 Aug
2016
Heat detections
113
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
212MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug28 Aug
28 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 2016 · 39 MW · 3 23 Aug 2016 · 28 MW · 12 24 Aug 2016 · 165 MW · 9 25 Aug 2016 · 241 MW · 22 26 Aug 2016 · 879 MW · 48 27 Aug 2016 · 68 MW · 10 28 Aug 2016 · 65 MW · 4
21 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug 28 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
59km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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. Mansa where it started
    3,378 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
21 Aug 30.6 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Aug 30.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Aug 30.2 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Aug 27.0 °C 29 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Aug 26.5 °C 31 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug 27.5 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Aug 27.2 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Aug 26.9 °C 26 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Aug after 27.0 °C 27 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug after 27.3 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Aug after 27.8 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Sept after 27.2 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Sept after 27.2 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Sept after 28.1 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept after 29.2 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Sept after 30.0 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Sept after 30.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept after 30.7 °C 21 % 37 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 · 14 Aug 2016
After · 4 Sept 2016

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 · 113Every 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 Mansa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2016 and 28 August 2016: 8 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 3,356 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mansa (3,378 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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. 113 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.

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.