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Mansa fire, July 2020 Mansa

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2020, 23:16 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2020 in Mansa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,649 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 195th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 62 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Burnt area
6,649ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
28 Jul 2020 – 10 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
28 Jul
2020
Heat detections
247
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

282930311234567891011

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
47km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,635 ha in 2016, 2,592 ha in 2017, 3,642 ha in 2018, 3,245 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,845 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mansa where it started
    6,692 ha reached on 21 Jul
    0.9 %

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)
28 Jul 25.1 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul 26.2 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul 27.0 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 27.4 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 26.0 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Aug 24.9 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Aug 26.4 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug 28.0 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Aug 29.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Aug 29.4 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Aug 28.9 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Aug 27.8 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug 26.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug 28.2 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Aug after 28.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Aug after 29.3 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Aug after 29.7 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug after 29.4 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Aug after 29.2 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Aug after 30.0 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Aug after 31.0 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Aug after 31.6 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Aug after 32.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Aug after 30.8 °C 26 % 46 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.

Before · 21 Jul 2020
After · 17 Aug 2020

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 · 247Every 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 28 July 2020 and 10 August 2020: 14 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 6,649 hectares (66.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mansa (6,692 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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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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.