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Tsumkwe fire, 22 September 2018 Tsumkwe, Epukiro

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2018, 00:03 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2018 in Tsumkwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,736 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 53th largest in Otjozondjupa since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 22 in Namibia in 2018, of 83.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tsumkwe · 2023Epukiro · 2023Tsumkwe · 2023Tsumkwe · 2022

Burnt area
5,736ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
22 Sept 2018 – 27 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
constituencies
Started on
22 Sept
2018
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
65
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
886MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2018 · 113 MW · 20 23 Sept 2018 · 74 MW · 15 24 Sept 2018 · 386 MW · 22 25 Sept 2018 · 4,596 MW · 129 26 Sept 2018 · 150 MW · 11 27 Sept 2018 · 1 MW · 1
22 Sept 23 Sept 24 Sept 25 Sept 26 Sept 27 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
44km/h · peak gust
8%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 3.6% of the area of London (57 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. Tsumkwe where it started
    5,179 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Epukiro
    604 ha reached on 25 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)
22 Sept 36.1 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Sept 35.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
24 Sept 35.2 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Sept 35.9 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Sept 36.2 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Sept 35.2 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Sept after 35.9 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 49
29 Sept after 35.4 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 61
30 Sept after 33.4 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
1 Oct after 32.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Oct after 33.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Oct after 35.0 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Oct after 33.1 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Oct after 34.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Oct after 34.0 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Oct after 33.6 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2018
After · 4 Oct 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 · 198Every 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 22 September 2018 to 27 September 2018 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 September 2018 to 25 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,736 hectares (57.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tsumkwe (5,179 ha, 0.2 %); Epukiro (604 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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: 25 September 2018 → 27 September 2018.
  2. Start date: 23 September 2018 → 22 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 23 September 2018 to 25 September 2018. 198 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.