Milengi fire, 26 July 2024 Milengi
The fire started on 26 July 2024 in Milengi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,751 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 176th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 534 with a page). Number 42 in Zambia in 2024, of 160.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,751ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 26 Jul 2024 – 6 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 303
- in a single hotspot: 72 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 365MW
- 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
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,132 ha in 2016, 2,409 ha in 2017, 2,945 ha in 2018, 2,360 ha in 2019, 3,148 ha in 2020, 4,278 ha in 2021, 2,420 ha in 2022, 3,279 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,635 ha that had burned before.
- 2,283 ha Milengi fire, August 2017 11,189 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,608 ha Milengi fire, August 2020 6,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,278 ha Milengi fire, August 2021 4,540 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,222 ha Milengi fire, September 2021 3,329 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 700 ha Milengi fire, August 2018 3,281 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 507 ha Milengi fire, August 2021 6,534 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 80 ha Milengi fire, August 2017 14,856 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 30 ha Milengi fire, August 2018 6,614 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
-
Milengi where it started7,795 ha reached on 29 Jul1.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.39 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul | 29.0 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Jul | 28.7 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Jul | 28.5 °C | 18 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Jul | 29.2 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Jul | 30.1 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 31 Jul | 29.5 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 1 Aug | 27.8 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Aug | 27.8 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Aug | 28.2 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 4 Aug | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Aug | 30.8 °C | 18 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Aug | 30.2 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 10 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Aug after | 29.4 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 30 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 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 · 303Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 167,326 haMilengi17 July 2026 · 54 days · 11 km away
- 169,563 haMilengi3 August 2026 · 20 days · 12 km away
- 25,575 haMilengi23 August 2020 · 24 days · 17 km away
- 30,020 haMilengi26 July 2024 · 29 days · 19 km away
- 41,279 haMilengi6 August 2021 · 38 days · 23 km away
- 29,893 haMilengi10 August 2019 · 38 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Milengi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2024 to 6 August 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2024 to 3 August 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,751 hectares (77.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Milengi (7,795 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 3 August 2024 → 6 August 2024.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 July 2024 to 3 August 2024. 303 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.
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.