Rufunsa fire, 16 October 2026 Rufunsa
The fire started on 16 October 2026 in Rufunsa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,490 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 12th largest in Lusaka since 2016 (of 79 with a page). Number 89 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.
The power measured by the satellite is low (20.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 9,490ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 16 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 174
- in a single hotspot: 21 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 130MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,119 ha in 2016, 9 ha in 2017, 880 ha in 2018, 1,476 ha in 2020, 274 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,394 ha that had burned before.
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 started9,531 ha reached on 16 Oct1.0 %
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 2025Inside 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct | 36.5 °C | 16 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 17 Oct | 36.3 °C | 18 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Oct | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Oct | 39.1 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 20 Oct | 41.0 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 21 Oct | 41.0 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Oct | 42.0 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Oct | 41.7 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 24 Oct | 39.0 °C | 18 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 25 Oct | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 49 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 60 |
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 20 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 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 · 174Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rufunsa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 October 2026 to 24 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,490 hectares (94.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rufunsa (9,531 ha, 1.0 %).
- Is the Rufunsa fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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.
- Area: 9,023 → 9,490 ha.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 October 2026 to 24 October 2026. 174 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.
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.