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Mwinilunga fire, 23 September 2019 Mwinilunga, Mufumbwe

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2019, 12:35 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2019 in Mwinilunga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,686 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 104 in Zambia in 2019, of 243.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mwinilunga · 2024Mwinilunga · 2025Mufumbwe · 2026Mufumbwe · 2026

Burnt area
4,686ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
23 Sept 2019 – 29 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
23 Sept
2019
Heat detections
223
in a single hotspot: 343 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
534MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept29 Sept
30 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2019 · 120 MW · 9 24 Sept 2019 · 2,752 MW · 73 25 Sept 2019 · 773 MW · 73 26 Sept 2019 · 98 MW · 27 27 Sept 2019 · 57 MW · 6 28 Sept 2019 · 18 MW · 2 29 Sept 2019 · 14 MW · 6 30 Sept 2019 · 435 MW · 12
23 Sept 24 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 29 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

35°high
50km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,015 ha in 2016, 1,399 ha in 2017, 51 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,154 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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. Mwinilunga where it started
    4,658 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Mufumbwe
    74 ha
    0.0 %

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 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)
23 Sept 34.9 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Sept 35.3 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Sept 33.9 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Sept 29.8 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Sept 29.8 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Sept 31.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Sept 34.6 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Sept after 32.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Oct after 31.9 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Oct after 32.8 °C 30 % 38 km/h 1.3 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2019
After · 6 Oct 2019

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 · 223Every 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 Mwinilunga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 September 2019 and 29 September 2019: 7 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 4,686 hectares (46.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mwinilunga (4,658 ha, 0.2 %); Mufumbwe (74 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

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. 223 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.