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Mpika fire, 19 September 2018 Mpika, Chama

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2018, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2018 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 232th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 516 with a page). Number 75 in Zambia in 2018, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2020Mpika · 2016Mpika · 2017

Burnt area
5,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
19 Sept 2018 – 28 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
19 Sept
2018
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
169MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 2018 · 6 MW · 3 20 Sept 2018 · 461 MW · 31 21 Sept 2018 · 171 MW · 27 22 Sept 2018 · 97 MW · 35 23 Sept 2018 · 88 MW · 21 24 Sept 2018 · 135 MW · 28 25 Sept 2018 · 251 MW · 37 26 Sept 2018 · 92 MW · 15 27 Sept 2018 · 102 MW · 16 28 Sept 2018 · 291 MW · 10
19 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 27 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

36°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 671 ha in 2016, 1,278 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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
    5,027 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.3 %
  2. Chama
    42 ha
    0.0 %

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)
19 Sept 32.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 33.1 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Sept 32.7 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Sept 34.2 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Sept 33.0 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept 32.7 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept 33.4 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept 35.6 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Sept 35.2 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Sept 34.9 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Sept after 34.7 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Sept after 31.1 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Oct after 27.6 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
2 Oct after 30.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
3 Oct after 33.8 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
4 Oct after 35.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Oct after 32.8 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Oct after 33.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct after 33.2 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Oct after 32.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Sept 2018
After · 5 Oct 2018

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 · 227Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 September 2018 and 28 September 2018: 10 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 5,048 hectares (50.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mpika (5,027 ha, 0.3 %); Chama (42 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 227 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.