Mansa fire, 18 July 2026 Mansa
The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Mansa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,536 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 155th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 106 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mansa · 2020Mansa · 2016Mansa · 2019Mansa · 2022
- Burnt area
- 8,536ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 18 Jul 2026 – 29 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 157
- in a single hotspot: 60 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 91MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,651 ha in 2016, 3,163 ha in 2017, 3,042 ha in 2018, 4,258 ha in 2019, 5,831 ha in 2020, 1,223 ha in 2021, 2,345 ha in 2022, 3,788 ha in 2023, 3,763 ha in 2024, 1,836 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,365 ha that had burned before.
- 4,339 ha Mansa fire, August 2020 7,247 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,162 ha Mansa fire, July 2016 8,299 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,728 ha Mansa fire, August 2019 4,319 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,855 ha Mansa fire, August 2022 3,299 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,216 ha Mansa fire, September 2021 3,841 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,055 ha Mansa fire, July 2019 5,097 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
-
Mansa where it started8,568 ha reached on 16 Jul1.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jul | 25.0 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Jul | 26.4 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 20 Jul | 27.6 °C | 29 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Jul | 28.6 °C | 29 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Jul | 28.1 °C | 34 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 23 Jul | 28.0 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Jul | 27.6 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Jul | 27.1 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 26 Jul | 26.0 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Jul | 25.8 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Jul | 27.0 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 29 Jul | 27.5 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Jul after | 27.5 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 31 Jul after | 27.1 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Aug after | 25.0 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Aug after | 24.8 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Aug after | 25.2 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Aug after | 26.2 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 38 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 39 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
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 21 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.4 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 · 157Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mansa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 29 July 2026: 12 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 8,536 hectares (85.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mansa (8,568 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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 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. 157 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.