Sesheke fire, July 2022 Sesheke, Sioma
The fire started on 30 July 2022 in Sesheke, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,109 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 27 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 11,109ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 30 Jul 2022 – 5 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2022
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,358 ha in 2016, 3,452 ha in 2017, 3,338 ha in 2018, 2,752 ha in 2019, 3,583 ha in 2020, 129 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,408 ha that had burned before.
- 1,880 ha Sioma fire, September 2018 7,637 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,730 ha Sesheke fire, September 2017 4,725 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,323 ha Sesheke fire, August 2020 3,016 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,255 ha Sesheke fire, August 2020 4,063 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,180 ha Sioma fire, July 2016 6,299 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Sesheke where it started7,072 ha0.6 %
-
4,107 ha0.5 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Jul | 26.6 °C | 18 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 31 Jul | 27.9 °C | 15 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Aug | 29.5 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Aug | 27.5 °C | 28 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 3 Aug | 28.5 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Aug | 29.2 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Aug | 29.5 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.4 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Aug after | 31.0 °C | 14 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Aug after | 29.6 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Aug after | 29.6 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
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.
Other fires nearby
- 7,637 haSioma29 September 2018 · 8 days · 9 km away
- 6,299 haSioma24 July 2016 · 4 days · 9 km away
- 5,107 haSesheke20 August 2026 · 8 days · 25 km away
- 11,079 haSiomaSeptember 2025 · 12 days · 29 km away
- 6,692 haSioma2 September 2021 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 11,042 haSioma14 September 2018 · 12 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sesheke fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 July 2022 and 5 August 2022: 7 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 11,109 hectares (111.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sesheke (7,072 ha, 0.6 %); Sioma (4,107 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
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.