How long did the Serenje fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2025 to 17 September 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2025 to 11 September 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,036 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Serenje (3,088 ha, 0.3 %); Chitambo (1,982 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2025-09-01 → 2025-09-17

Serenje fire, September 2025 Serenje, Chitambo

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2025, 11:41 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2025 in Serenje, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,036 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 153th largest in Central since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 102 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.

The power measured by the satellite is low (23.1 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 · 2023 Serenje · 2026 Chitambo · 2026

Burnt area: 5,036ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 1 Sept 2025 – 17 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 1 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 130; in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 63MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept17 Sept

Play back 17 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 16 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

28°high

50km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 448 ha in 2016, 302 ha in 2017, 768 ha in 2018, 932 ha in 2019, 1,100 ha in 2020, 1,146 ha in 2021, 5 ha in 2022, 2,061 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,169 ha that had burned before.

1,836 ha Serenje fire, September 2023 3,761 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

Serenje where it started

3,088 ha reached on 1 Sept

0.3 %
Chitambo

1,982 ha reached on 5 Sept

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area1.1 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
3 Sept	24.8 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Sept	26.7 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Sept	27.5 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Sept	28.0 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
7 Sept	28.3 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Sept	27.8 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Sept	27.7 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 Sept	27.4 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Sept	27.7 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Sept	27.6 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Sept	27.5 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Sept	27.5 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Sept	28.9 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Sept	30.4 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Sept	31.0 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
18 Sept after	29.1 °C	21 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Sept after	28.9 °C	34 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Sept after	25.5 °C	45 %	57 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
21 Sept after	26.2 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2025

After · 24 Sept 2025

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 6 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM1053 µg/m³

Optical depth0.85

WHO 15

1234567891011121314

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 130Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 1 September 2025 to 17 September 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2025 to 11 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,036 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Serenje (3,088 ha, 0.3 %); Chitambo (1,982 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 September 2025 → 17 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 September 2025 → 1 September 2025.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 3 September 2025 to 11 September 2025. 130 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned