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Mungwi fire, 27 August 2016 Mungwi

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2016, 10:49 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2016 in Mungwi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,578 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 24th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 19 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

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Suggestions: Mungwi · 2026Mungwi · 2026Mungwi · 2026Mungwi · 2025

Burnt area
19,578ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
27 Aug 2016 – 15 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Aug
2016
Heat detections
937
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
561MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug15 Sept
16 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2016 · 122 MW · 15 28 Aug 2016 · 606 MW · 41 29 Aug 2016 · 335 MW · 38 30 Aug 2016 · 519 MW · 49 31 Aug 2016 · 375 MW · 53 1 Sept 2016 · 169 MW · 18 2 Sept 2016 · 469 MW · 33 3 Sept 2016 · 296 MW · 28 4 Sept 2016 · 202 MW · 8 5 Sept 2016 · 1,327 MW · 76 6 Sept 2016 · 2,068 MW · 138 7 Sept 2016 · 1,272 MW · 91 8 Sept 2016 · 830 MW · 67 9 Sept 2016 · 926 MW · 46 10 Sept 2016 · 891 MW · 77 11 Sept 2016 · 19 MW · 2 12 Sept 2016 · 158 MW · 14 13 Sept 2016 · 117 MW · 18 15 Sept 2016 · 99 MW · 6 16 Sept 2016 · 420 MW · 18
27 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 15 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

32°high
43km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (196 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. Mungwi where it started
    19,705 ha reached on 20 Aug
    2.0 %

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 area27 ha
Residents≈ 2,800

Inside the perimeter there were about 27 hectares of built-up land and about 2,800 residents (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)
27 Aug 27.6 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Aug 26.8 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug 28.3 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Aug 28.3 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Aug 28.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Sept 27.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Sept 27.4 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 28.3 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept 29.4 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Sept 30.3 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Sept 30.3 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 30.3 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 31.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 30.7 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Sept 31.4 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept 30.4 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 30.4 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Sept 31.3 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 31.3 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept 31.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept after 32.1 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Sept after 32.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept after 33.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept after 30.9 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Sept after 29.5 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept after 29.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 30.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 31.9 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Sept after 32.0 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept after 32.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2016
After · 22 Sept 2016

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 · 937Every 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 Mungwi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2016 and 15 September 2016: 20 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 19,578 hectares (195.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mungwi (19,705 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 43 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 937 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.