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Namwala fire, June 2025 Namwala

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2025, 11:52 UTC

The fire started on 10 June 2025 in Namwala, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,428 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Southern since 2016 (of 58 with a page). Number 92 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namwala · 2026Itezhi-Tezhi · 2024Monze · 2016

Burnt area
5,428ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
10 Jun 2025 – 10 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Jun
2025
Heat detections
223
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
102MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jun10 Jul
9 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jun 2025 · 22 MW · 3 12 Jun 2025 · 21 MW · 4 13 Jun 2025 · 2 MW · 1 15 Jun 2025 · 19 MW · 3 16 Jun 2025 · 52 MW · 4 17 Jun 2025 · 32 MW · 4 18 Jun 2025 · 81 MW · 4 19 Jun 2025 · 171 MW · 15 20 Jun 2025 · 75 MW · 9 21 Jun 2025 · 211 MW · 31 22 Jun 2025 · 101 MW · 16 23 Jun 2025 · 148 MW · 13 24 Jun 2025 · 136 MW · 11 25 Jun 2025 · 59 MW · 7 26 Jun 2025 · 340 MW · 18 27 Jun 2025 · 173 MW · 20 28 Jun 2025 · 85 MW · 9 29 Jun 2025 · 114 MW · 14 30 Jun 2025 · 124 MW · 9 1 Jul 2025 · 37 MW · 3 2 Jul 2025 · 16 MW · 2 3 Jul 2025 · 93 MW · 3 4 Jul 2025 · 380 MW · 14 8 Jul 2025 · 51 MW · 5 9 Jul 2025 · 3 MW · 1
10 Jun 16 Jun 20 Jun 24 Jun 28 Jun 2 Jul 4 Jul 9 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

29°high
56km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 335 ha in 2019, 2,709 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Namwala where it started
    5,455 ha reached on 10 Jun
    1.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
17 Jun 25.1 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Jun 26.5 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Jun 27.5 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jun 27.6 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Jun 27.6 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jun 25.5 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jun 24.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jun 25.7 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jun 26.4 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jun 28.6 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jun 27.9 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Jun 26.6 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jun 26.1 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jun 26.1 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Jul 24.7 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jul 25.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 26.6 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jul 27.4 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Jul 28.1 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Jul 27.7 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Jul 28.6 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Jul 25.3 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jul 22.7 °C 38 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jul 24.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jul after 24.7 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul after 25.2 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jul after 25.4 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Jul after 25.2 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jul after 26.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul after 25.9 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Jul after 26.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul after 27.1 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul after 26.0 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Jul after 23.6 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jun 2025
After · 17 Jul 2025

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 24 June 2025 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak74 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM1074 µg/m³
Optical depth0.42
1516171819202122232425262728293012345678910111213
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 · 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 Namwala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 June 2025 to 10 July 2025 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 June 2025 to 10 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,428 hectares (54.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Namwala (5,455 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 17 June 2025 → 10 June 2025.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 June 2025 to 10 July 2025. 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 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.