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Mpika fire, 16 September 2018 Mpika

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2018, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2018 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,547 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 396th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 516 with a page). Number 144 in Zambia in 2018, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2026Mpika · 2025Mpika · 2017

Burnt area
3,547ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
16 Sept 2018 – 22 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Sept
2018
Heat detections
160
in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
250MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept22 Sept
23 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2018 · 0 MW · 1 17 Sept 2018 · 464 MW · 36 18 Sept 2018 · 520 MW · 39 19 Sept 2018 · 238 MW · 16 20 Sept 2018 · 567 MW · 32 21 Sept 2018 · 18 MW · 3 22 Sept 2018 · 65 MW · 12 23 Sept 2018 · 131 MW · 5
16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 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

31°high
51km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 519 ha in 2016, 470 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 716 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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
    3,567 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area1.1 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 90 residents (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)
16 Sept 31.0 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 31.4 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept 30.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 29.9 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept 30.4 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Sept 29.9 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Sept 30.6 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 30.0 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 29.9 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Sept after 30.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept after 32.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Sept after 31.8 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Sept after 32.0 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Sept after 32.0 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Sept after 27.2 °C 33 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 25.0 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.7 mm High 31
2 Oct after 29.0 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2018
After · 29 Sept 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 · 160Every 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 16 September 2018 and 22 September 2018: 7 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 3,547 hectares (35.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpika (3,567 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 160 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 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.