Skip to content
worldfires
en
ZM · Zambia · –

Nsama fire, 3 September 2020 Nsama

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2020, 11:45 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2020 in Nsama, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,768 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 423th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 156 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpulungu · 2025Mporokoso · 2026

Burnt area
3,768ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
3 Sept 2020 – 8 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Sept
2020
Heat detections
121
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
352MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept8 Sept
8 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2020 · 1 MW · 1 4 Sept 2020 · 537 MW · 27 5 Sept 2020 · 1,275 MW · 41 6 Sept 2020 · 135 MW · 19 7 Sept 2020 · 144 MW · 30 8 Sept 2020 · 17 MW · 3
3 Sept 5 Sept 7 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

31°high
49km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days 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 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Nsama where it started
    3,796 ha
    0.5 %

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 area2.3 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
3 Sept 29.2 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 30.2 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 30.4 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 30.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Sept 30.0 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept 30.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept after 29.2 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept after 29.5 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept after 30.6 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept after 29.7 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept after 30.4 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept after 31.7 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Sept after 32.1 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept after 31.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept after 32.5 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept after 33.0 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2020
After · 15 Sept 2020

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 · 0Every 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 Nsama fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2020 and 8 September 2020: 6 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 3,768 hectares (37.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nsama (3,796 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 49 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 28 August 2020 → 3 September 2020.
  2. Start date: 3 September 2020 → 28 August 2020.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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. No 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.