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Mashare fire, 15 September 2026 Mashare

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2026, 12:27 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2026 in Mashare, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,279 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 138th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 55 in Namibia in 2026, of 153.

Burnt area
4,279ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
15 Sept 2026 – 18 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
15 Sept
2026
Heat detections
85
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
759MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Sept 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept18 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

15161718

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
54km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 19 Sept.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 547 ha in 2017, 41 ha in 2018, 3,448 ha in 2019, 262 ha in 2020, 2,647 ha in 2022, 3,253 ha in 2024, 1,449 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,148 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mashare where it started
    4,306 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.5 %

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)
15 Sept 33.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 35.4 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Sept 35.2 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
19 Sept after 29.5 °C 21 % 59 km/h 3.2 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2026
After · 25 Sept 2026

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 15 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1061 µg/m³
Optical depth1.38
131415161718192021
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 · 85Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mashare fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 September 2026 and 18 September 2026: 4 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 4,279 hectares (42.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mashare (4,306 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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

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 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.