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Mpika fire, 4 October 2018 Mpika

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2018, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2018 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,309 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 89th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 513 with a page). Number 28 in Zambia in 2018, of 204.

Burnt area
10,309ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
4 Oct 2018 – 13 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Oct
2018
Heat detections
284
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct13 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

4567891011121314

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
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,647 ha in 2016, 2,788 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,267 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mpika where it started
    10,364 ha reached on 4 Oct
    0.6 %

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)
4 Oct 35.5 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Oct 33.3 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
6 Oct 33.8 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Oct 33.7 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct 32.4 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Oct 32.0 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Oct 33.4 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Oct 32.6 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Oct 34.5 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Oct 35.1 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Oct after 34.0 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Oct after 35.5 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Oct after 36.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Oct after 37.7 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Oct after 36.8 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Oct after 37.1 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 46
20 Oct after 36.3 °C 28 % 52 km/h 2.9 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2018
After · 20 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 · 284Every 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 4 October 2018 and 13 October 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 10,309 hectares (103.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpika (10,364 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 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

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 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.