How long did the Serenje fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 14 October 2026 to 23 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.

How much area did it burn?

There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 3,080 hectares with fire (30.8 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Serenje (3,080 ha, 0.3 %).

Is the Serenje fire still active?

No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 23:24 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 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 · 2026-10-14 → 2026-10-23

Serenje fire, 14 October 2026 Serenje

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2026, 23:24 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 14 October 2026 in Serenje, Zambia. It was active for 10 days, with 246 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,080 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single municipality.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serenje · 2026 Serenje · 2026 Serenje · 2026 Serenje · 2026

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire: ≈ 3,080ha; rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration: 10days; 14 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 246; in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 169MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct23 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 16 Oct 18 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high

44km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

Serenje where it started

3,080 ha reached on 14 Oct

0.3 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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	Danger (FWI)
14 Oct	31.2 °C	25 %	42 km/h	High 26
15 Oct	31.4 °C	23 %	44 km/h	High 28
16 Oct	31.1 °C	22 %	44 km/h	High 28
17 Oct	30.5 °C	24 %	39 km/h	High 28
18 Oct	31.9 °C	18 %	38 km/h	High 30
19 Oct	33.8 °C	18 %	34 km/h	High 32
20 Oct	35.2 °C	16 %	40 km/h	High 37
21 Oct	35.6 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Very high 39
22 Oct	36.2 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Very high 39
23 Oct	37.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Very high 43
24 Oct after	33.7 °C	22 %	47 km/h	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Oct 2026

After · 30 Oct 2026

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 21 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM1042 µg/m³

Optical depth0.73

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223

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 · 246Every 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, it burned from 14 October 2026 to 23 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?: There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 3,080 hectares with fire (30.8 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Serenje (3,080 ha, 0.3 %).
Is the Serenje fire still active?: No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 23:24 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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

No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,080 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 246 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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