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Mpika fire, 30 September 2016 Mpika

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2016, 11:01 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2016 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 37,949 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 6 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2020Mpika · 2017Mpika · 2025Mpika · 2020

Burnt area
37,949ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
30 Sept 2016 – 28 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Sept
2016
Heat detections
1,590
in a single hotspot: 128 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
474MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept28 Oct
28 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2016 · 87 MW · 31 1 Oct 2016 · 49 MW · 20 2 Oct 2016 · 170 MW · 29 3 Oct 2016 · 46 MW · 3 4 Oct 2016 · 6 MW · 6 5 Oct 2016 · 60 MW · 18 6 Oct 2016 · 317 MW · 51 7 Oct 2016 · 739 MW · 105 8 Oct 2016 · 2,240 MW · 235 9 Oct 2016 · 1,723 MW · 217 10 Oct 2016 · 1,812 MW · 171 11 Oct 2016 · 666 MW · 70 12 Oct 2016 · 167 MW · 29 13 Oct 2016 · 274 MW · 43 14 Oct 2016 · 24 MW · 4 15 Oct 2016 · 20 MW · 6 16 Oct 2016 · 28 MW · 8 17 Oct 2016 · 84 MW · 25 18 Oct 2016 · 466 MW · 46 19 Oct 2016 · 698 MW · 98 20 Oct 2016 · 746 MW · 93 21 Oct 2016 · 571 MW · 67 22 Oct 2016 · 1,315 MW · 80 23 Oct 2016 · 339 MW · 46 24 Oct 2016 · 447 MW · 71 25 Oct 2016 · 70 MW · 11 26 Oct 2016 · 82 MW · 5 28 Oct 2016 · 14 MW · 2
30 Sept 4 Oct 8 Oct 12 Oct 16 Oct 20 Oct 24 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
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 1 Nov.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 24% of the area of London (379 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

  1. Mpika where it started
    38,129 ha reached on 30 Sept
    2.2 %

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)
30 Sept 34.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Oct 34.2 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Oct 35.7 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Oct 35.8 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Oct 30.8 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Oct 33.6 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct 35.3 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 36.9 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct 36.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Oct 37.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Oct 36.3 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Oct 35.6 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Oct 35.8 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Oct 36.4 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Oct 35.8 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Oct 34.9 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Oct 35.7 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Oct 37.3 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Oct 36.6 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Oct 34.9 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Oct 35.0 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Oct 35.5 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Oct 36.8 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Oct 37.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Oct 37.8 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Oct 36.8 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Oct 36.3 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Oct 35.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Oct 36.7 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Oct after 36.6 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Oct after 35.7 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 40
31 Oct after 37.6 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.7 mm Extreme 56
1 Nov after 36.2 °C 25 % 46 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2016
After · 4 Nov 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 1,590Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mpika fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2016 to 28 October 2016 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2016 to 25 October 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 37,949 hectares (379.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpika (38,129 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 October 2016 → 28 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 2 October 2016 → 30 September 2016.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 October 2016 to 25 October 2016. 1,590 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.

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.