Mufumbwe fire, August 2025 Kasempa, Mumbwa, Mufumbwe
The fire started on 28 August 2025 in Mufumbwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 135,262 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
- 41,528 haMumbwa3 September 2025 · 21 days
- 34,546 haMufumbwe3 September 2025 · 11 days
- 7,720 haKasempa13 September 2025 · 8 days
- 6,719 haKasempa21 August 2025 · 10 days
- 5,474 haMufumbwe5 September 2025 · 9 days
- 4,225 haMumbwa9 September 2025 · 8 days
- 3,957 haNkeyemaSeptember 2025 · 12 days
- 3,828 haMufumbwe9 September 2025 · 8 days
It is the largest fire in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 4 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 135,262ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 28 Aug 2025 – 15 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 5,449
- in a single hotspot: 387 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.6GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22,405 ha in 2016, 39,057 ha in 2017, 20,183 ha in 2018, 37,446 ha in 2019, 31,385 ha in 2020, 19,569 ha in 2021, 36,276 ha in 2022, 17,726 ha in 2023, 7,736 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 109,200 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
57,497 ha reached on 24 Aug2.6 %
-
43,217 ha reached on 22 Aug2.2 %
-
Mufumbwe where it started35,588 ha reached on 22 Aug1.9 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | 31.8 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 29 Aug | 31.8 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 30 Aug | 32.3 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 31 Aug | 31.3 °C | 14 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 1 Sept | 31.5 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 2 Sept | 30.1 °C | 12 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 3 Sept | 29.8 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Sept | 31.0 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 5 Sept | 31.7 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 6 Sept | 32.3 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 Sept | 33.3 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Sept | 33.0 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Sept | 32.7 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 10 Sept | 32.5 °C | 17 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 11 Sept | 32.0 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 12 Sept | 32.2 °C | 21 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 13 Sept | 30.8 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 14 Sept | 34.0 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Sept | 34.7 °C | 9 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 16 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 10 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.5 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 19 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 20 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 22 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 18 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 22 Sept after | 33.9 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Sept after | 34.6 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 25 Sept after | 34.6 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 6 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 5,449Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 42,217 haMufumbweAugust 2017 · 18 days · 7 km away
- 45,963 haKasempa29 August 2019 · 30 days · 23 km away
- 22,416 haMufumbwe 18 October 2026 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 35,449 haMumbwa5 June 2026 · 20 days · 31 km away
- 41,528 haMumbwa3 September 2025 · 21 days · 36 km away
- 34,546 haMufumbwe3 September 2025 · 11 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mufumbwe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2025 and 15 September 2025: 19 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 135,262 hectares (1,352.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Kasempa (57,497 ha, 2.6 %); Mumbwa (43,217 ha, 2.2 %); Mufumbwe (35,588 ha, 1.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5,449 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.