How long did the Mpika fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2026 to 24 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 39,231 hectares (392.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mpika (39,463 ha, 2.3 %).

Is the Mpika fire still active?

Yes: satellites detected fire on 25 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2026-10-04 → 2026-10-25

Mpika fire, 4 October 2026 Mpika

Burning · last detection 25 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2026 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 39,231 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 517 with a page). Number 15 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2025 Mpika · 2018 Mpika · 2025 Mpika · 2017

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 25 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 39,231ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 4 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 4 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 853; in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 325MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct25 Oct

Play back 25 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 8 Oct 11 Oct 15 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 22 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

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,883 ha in 2016, 153 ha in 2017, 1,468 ha in 2018, 836 ha in 2022, 607 ha in 2024, 2,792 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,621 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 25% of the area of London (392 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

Mpika where it started

39,463 ha reached on 5 Oct

2.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.35 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
4 Oct	31.3 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Oct	33.2 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.9 mm	High 25
6 Oct	34.4 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 Oct	36.2 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
8 Oct	35.1 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Oct	34.7 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
10 Oct	34.8 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Oct	34.0 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Oct	34.9 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
13 Oct	35.3 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Oct	34.9 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Oct	34.7 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Oct	35.1 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Oct	34.7 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Oct	34.7 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Oct	35.9 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Oct	38.0 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Oct	38.3 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Oct	38.7 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
23 Oct	39.4 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
24 Oct	37.6 °C	17 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Oct	34.9 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Sept 2026

After · 24 Oct 2026

Before After

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 11 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1039 µg/m³

Optical depth0.63

WHO 15

234567891011121314151617

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 853Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 4 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2026 to 24 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 39,231 hectares (392.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mpika (39,463 ha, 2.3 %).
Is the Mpika fire still active?: Yes: satellites detected fire on 25 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Area: 35,516 → 39,231 ha.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 October 2026 to 24 October 2026. 853 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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.