Salima fire, September 2025 Salima, Lilongwe
The fire started on 20 September 2025 in Salima, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,647 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 82th largest in Central Region since 2016 (of 207 with a page). Number 39 in Malawi in 2025, of 76.
- Burnt area
- 1,647ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 20 Sept 2025 – 23 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 46
- in a single hotspot: 30 MW
- Energy released
- 337MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2016, 408 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 410 ha that had burned before.
- 290 ha Lilongwe fire, October 2022 1,293 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 118 ha Salima fire, October 2022 1,528 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 30 ha Salima fire, August 2016 1,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Salima where it started1,317 ha reached on 20 Sept0.6 %
-
340 ha reached on 21 Sept0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 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 · 46Every 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 Salima fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2025 and 23 September 2025: 4 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 1,647 hectares (16.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Salima (1,317 ha, 0.6 %); Lilongwe (340 ha, 0.0 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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
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
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.