How long did the Manyinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2026 to 19 September 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2026 to 19 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,824 hectares (48.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Manyinga (4,858 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2026-09-08 → 2026-09-19

Manyinga fire, 8 September 2026 Manyinga

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2026, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2026 in Manyinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,824 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 81th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 239 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manyinga · 2026 Manyinga · 2020

Burnt area: 4,824ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 8 Sept 2026 – 19 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 113; in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept19 Sept

Play back 19 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

46km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 29 Sept.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,679 ha in 2018, 534 ha in 2020, 669 ha in 2023, 2,518 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,907 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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

Manyinga where it started

4,858 ha reached on 8 Sept

0.6 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.35 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
8 Sept	32.1 °C	18 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Sept	30.3 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Sept	30.7 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Sept	32.3 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Sept	33.5 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 Sept	34.7 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Sept	35.0 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Sept	34.8 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Sept	35.2 °C	8 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Sept	34.7 °C	9 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
18 Sept	34.2 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
19 Sept	34.4 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
20 Sept after	30.0 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Sept after	30.5 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.6 mm	High 28
22 Sept after	31.9 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Sept after	33.4 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Sept after	35.0 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
25 Sept after	35.1 °C	7 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
26 Sept after	34.9 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
27 Sept after	36.0 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
28 Sept after	35.4 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Sept after	35.7 °C	19 %	27 km/h	1.6 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2026

After · 26 Sept 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 20 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10115 µg/m³

Optical depth1.86

WHO 15

678910111213141516171819202122

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manyinga fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2026 to 19 September 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2026 to 19 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,824 hectares (48.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Manyinga (4,858 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 10 September 2026 to 19 September 2026. 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.
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.

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.

Where it burned