Rufunsa fire, July 2024 Rufunsa
The fire started on 25 July 2024 in Rufunsa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 77th largest in Lusaka since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 156 in Zambia in 2024, of 160.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,060ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 25 Jul 2024 – 1 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 55
- in a single hotspot: 33 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- 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
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,205 ha in 2017, 2,353 ha in 2019, 1,244 ha in 2021, 1,127 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,964 ha that had burned before.
- 2,205 ha Rufunsa fire, October 2017 12,878 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,440 ha Rufunsa fire, October 2019 8,833 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 868 ha Rufunsa fire, September 2019 11,002 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 48 ha Luangwa fire, October 2021 15,689 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Rufunsa where it started3,082 ha reached on 29 Jul0.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Jul | 32.6 °C | 13 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Jul | 31.3 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 27 Jul | 31.4 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Jul | 32.3 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 29 Jul | 33.3 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 30 Jul | 30.5 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 31 Jul | 30.2 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Aug | 27.7 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 3 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Aug after | 33.6 °C | 14 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 6 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 25 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Aug after | 30.3 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
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 27 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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 · 55Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 23,797 haRufunsaSeptember 2018 · 28 days · 8 km away
- 15,689 haLuangwaOctober 2021 · 24 days · 10 km away
- 26,112 haRufunsa 13 October 2026 · 12 days · 19 km away
- 15,943 haRufunsa1 September 2016 · 32 days · 23 km away
- 32,071 haKafueSeptember 2018 · 17 days · 25 km away
- 14,382 haLuangwa3 October 2022 · 17 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rufunsa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 July 2024 and 1 August 2024: 8 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 3,060 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rufunsa (3,082 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 55 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.
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.