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Serenje fire, 4 September 2020 Serenje

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2020, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2020 in Serenje, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,328 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 328th largest in Central since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 190 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

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.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serenje · 2026Serenje · 2026Chitambo · 2026Chitambo · 2019

Burnt area
3,328ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
4 Sept 2020 – 13 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Sept
2020
Heat detections
103
in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
94MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept13 Sept
13 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2020 · 11 MW · 2 5 Sept 2020 · 62 MW · 7 6 Sept 2020 · 233 MW · 22 7 Sept 2020 · 245 MW · 33 8 Sept 2020 · 143 MW · 26 9 Sept 2020 · 41 MW · 8 10 Sept 2020 · 14 MW · 3 13 Sept 2020 · 7 MW · 2
4 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 10 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

25°high
38km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 406 ha in 2018, 472 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Serenje where it started
    3,353 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area7.7 ha
Residents≈ 950

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.7 hectares of built-up land and about 950 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)
4 Sept 24.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 23.4 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Sept 23.8 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Sept 24.7 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 25.2 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 24.2 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Sept 25.3 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Sept 25.6 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept 25.4 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept 27.1 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept after 28.5 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept after 30.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept after 31.6 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept after 32.1 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept after 30.1 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Sept after 29.0 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Sept after 29.6 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2020
After · 20 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 · 103Every 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 Serenje fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2020 to 13 September 2020 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 September 2020 to 10 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,328 hectares (33.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Serenje (3,353 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 September 2020 → 13 September 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.

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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 4 September 2020 to 10 September 2020. 103 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.