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Tsumkwe fire, 10 September 2018 Mashare, Tsumkwe

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2018, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2018 in Tsumkwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,717 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in Otjozondjupa since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 32 in Namibia in 2018, of 83.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashare · 2026Tsumkwe · 2026Mashare · 2018

Burnt area
3,717ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
10 Sept 2018 – 18 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
constituencies
Started on
10 Sept
2018
Heat detections
164
in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
245MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept18 Sept
17 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2018 · 129 MW · 18 11 Sept 2018 · 180 MW · 14 12 Sept 2018 · 111 MW · 19 13 Sept 2018 · 121 MW · 14 14 Sept 2018 · 357 MW · 25 15 Sept 2018 · 812 MW · 36 16 Sept 2018 · 245 MW · 37 17 Sept 2018 · 8 MW · 1
10 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 15 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

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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. Mashare
    2,135 ha reached on 13 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Tsumkwe where it started
    1,605 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
13 Sept 32.6 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Sept 33.4 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Sept 35.2 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Sept 35.8 °C 7 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept 35.9 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Sept 36.3 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Sept after 36.2 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Sept after 33.7 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
21 Sept after 35.2 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
22 Sept after 35.5 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Sept after 35.3 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Sept after 34.7 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Sept after 35.2 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Sept after 35.4 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Sept after 35.4 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2018
After · 25 Sept 2018

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 · 164Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tsumkwe fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2018 to 18 September 2018 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2018 to 17 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,717 hectares (37.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mashare (2,135 ha, 0.2 %); Tsumkwe (1,605 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 September 2018 → 18 September 2018.
  2. Start date: 13 September 2018 → 10 September 2018.

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 13 September 2018 to 17 September 2018. 164 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.