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Mpika fire, 7 September 2020 Mpika

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2020, 23:16 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2020 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,588 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 516 with a page). Number 8 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2017Mpika · 2018Mpika · 2016Mpika · 2016

Burnt area
29,588ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
7 Sept 2020 – 27 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
7 Sept
2020
Heat detections
973
in a single hotspot: 123 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
250MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept27 Sept
28 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2020 · 315 MW · 43 8 Sept 2020 · 286 MW · 54 9 Sept 2020 · 150 MW · 47 10 Sept 2020 · 450 MW · 88 11 Sept 2020 · 112 MW · 30 12 Sept 2020 · 168 MW · 36 13 Sept 2020 · 265 MW · 54 14 Sept 2020 · 269 MW · 39 15 Sept 2020 · 512 MW · 52 16 Sept 2020 · 609 MW · 55 17 Sept 2020 · 482 MW · 67 18 Sept 2020 · 117 MW · 52 19 Sept 2020 · 379 MW · 46 20 Sept 2020 · 70 MW · 13 21 Sept 2020 · 181 MW · 50 22 Sept 2020 · 266 MW · 55 23 Sept 2020 · 39 MW · 19 24 Sept 2020 · 68 MW · 15 25 Sept 2020 · 258 MW · 36 26 Sept 2020 · 435 MW · 45 27 Sept 2020 · 54 MW · 18 28 Sept 2020 · 6 MW · 5
7 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 23 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

37°high
40km/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

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,277 ha in 2016, 16,317 ha in 2017, 8,116 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 22,079 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (296 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
    29,757 ha reached on 7 Sept
    1.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
7 Sept 29.1 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Sept 29.8 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Sept 27.9 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Sept 29.4 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept 30.9 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 30.3 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept 31.8 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Sept 32.4 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 34.5 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Sept 35.2 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Sept 35.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept 33.1 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 32.7 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept 33.0 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept 34.0 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept 34.5 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Sept 30.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept 31.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Sept 33.4 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept 35.5 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Sept 36.8 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Sept after 36.1 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Sept after 34.8 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Sept after 34.7 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Oct after 35.0 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Oct after 36.6 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Oct after 36.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Oct after 36.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Oct after 36.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Oct after 36.0 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Oct after 34.9 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2020
After · 4 Oct 2020

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 · 973Every 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 7 September 2020 and 27 September 2020: 21 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 29,588 hectares (295.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpika (29,757 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °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 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. 973 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.