How long did the Mashare fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 8 October 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2022 to 8 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,850 hectares (38.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mashare (3,859 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). It is not an official report.

NA · Namibia · 2022-09-23 → 2022-10-08

Mashare fire, 23 September 2022 Mashare

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2022, 00:03 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2022 in Mashare, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,850 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 152th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 48 in Namibia in 2022, of 119.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashare · 2016 Mashare · 2020 Mashare · 2018 Mashare · 2020

Burnt area: 3,850ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 23 Sept 2022 – 8 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; constituencies
Started on: 23 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 132; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept8 Oct

Play back 8 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 6 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

52km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,041 ha in 2016, 708 ha in 2018, 771 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,358 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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

Mashare where it started

3,859 ha reached on 23 Sept

0.4 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
27 Sept	36.1 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
28 Sept	36.7 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
29 Sept	35.0 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
30 Sept	35.7 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
1 Oct	36.2 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
2 Oct	36.5 °C	11 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
3 Oct	36.9 °C	7 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
4 Oct	37.3 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
5 Oct	38.3 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
6 Oct	37.2 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
7 Oct	37.7 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
8 Oct	35.8 °C	8 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
9 Oct after	35.1 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
10 Oct after	35.7 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
11 Oct after	35.2 °C	10 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 80
12 Oct after	35.5 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
13 Oct after	35.4 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
14 Oct after	36.2 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
15 Oct after	36.7 °C	10 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
16 Oct after	32.7 °C	17 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
17 Oct after	30.6 °C	26 %	53 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 56
18 Oct after	33.7 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Sept 2022

After · 15 Oct 2022

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 6 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM1066 µg/m³

Optical depth0.78

WHO 15

2526272829301234567891011

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 · 132Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mashare fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 8 October 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2022 to 8 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,850 hectares (38.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mashare (3,859 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Start date: 27 September 2022 → 23 September 2022.

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 27 September 2022 to 8 October 2022. 132 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 2020, 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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