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Mufumbwe fire, 13 September 2017 Mufumbwe

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2017, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2017 in Mufumbwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,460 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 287 with a page). Number 11 in Zambia in 2017, of 230.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kasempa · 2016Mufumbwe · 2025Kasempa · 2026Mufumbwe · 2018

Burnt area
24,460ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
13 Sept 2017 – 8 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
13 Sept
2017
Heat detections
725
in a single hotspot: 127 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
347MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept8 Oct
4 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 2017 · 13 MW · 1 14 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 3 15 Sept 2017 · 35 MW · 5 18 Sept 2017 · 18 MW · 1 19 Sept 2017 · 164 MW · 42 20 Sept 2017 · 1,184 MW · 48 21 Sept 2017 · 156 MW · 49 22 Sept 2017 · 847 MW · 39 23 Sept 2017 · 577 MW · 74 24 Sept 2017 · 1,209 MW · 151 25 Sept 2017 · 757 MW · 60 26 Sept 2017 · 297 MW · 32 27 Sept 2017 · 785 MW · 42 28 Sept 2017 · 189 MW · 32 29 Sept 2017 · 64 MW · 39 30 Sept 2017 · 47 MW · 25 1 Oct 2017 · 54 MW · 26 2 Oct 2017 · 309 MW · 28 3 Oct 2017 · 215 MW · 24 4 Oct 2017 · 15 MW · 4
13 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 3 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

35°high
52km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.2 mm on 9 Oct.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,470 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (245 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. Mufumbwe where it started
    24,658 ha reached on 13 Sept
    1.3 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
13 Sept 31.9 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 32.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept 32.6 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Sept 32.5 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 33.3 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 34.4 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept 33.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Sept 33.3 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Sept 32.0 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Sept 32.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Sept 33.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Sept 33.6 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Sept 33.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept 35.2 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept 35.1 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept 34.3 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Sept 31.6 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Sept 30.9 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct 32.5 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct 32.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct 34.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Oct 34.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Oct 34.5 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Oct 33.3 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 33.7 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 34.2 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct after 29.3 °C 43 % 31 km/h 7.2 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2017
After · 15 Oct 2017

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 · 725Every 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 Mufumbwe fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2017 to 8 October 2017 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2017 to 4 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 24,460 hectares (244.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mufumbwe (24,658 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 October 2017 → 8 October 2017.
  2. Start date: 19 September 2017 → 13 September 2017.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 September 2017 to 4 October 2017. 725 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 2015, 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.