How long did the Tsumkwe fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2021 to 5 October 2021 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2021 to 5 October 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,759 hectares (37.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tsumkwe (3,773 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

NA · Namibia · 2021-09-29 → 2021-10-05

Tsumkwe fire, 29 September 2021 Tsumkwe

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2021, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2021 in Tsumkwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,759 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 91th largest in Otjozondjupa since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 68 in Namibia in 2021, of 175.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tsumkwe · 2018 Tsumkwe · 2022 Tsumkwe · 2026 Mashare · 2026

Burnt area: 3,759ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 29 Sept 2021 – 5 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; constituencies
Started on: 29 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 125; in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 385MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept5 Oct

Play back 5 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 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

34°high

40km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,708 ha in 2018, 1,110 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,657 ha that had burned before.

1,708 ha Tsumkwe fire, October 2018 6,675 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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

Tsumkwe where it started

3,773 ha reached on 1 Oct

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.

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)
1 Oct	33.3 °C	11 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 59
2 Oct	31.6 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
3 Oct	30.6 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
4 Oct	33.1 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
5 Oct	33.8 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
6 Oct after	33.2 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Oct after	33.3 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Oct after	32.9 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
9 Oct after	36.0 °C	10 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
10 Oct after	34.2 °C	7 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
11 Oct after	31.9 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
12 Oct after	32.2 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
13 Oct after	33.3 °C	13 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Oct after	35.1 °C	10 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
15 Oct after	36.2 °C	9 %	36 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 · 22 Sept 2021

After · 12 Oct 2021

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.

Detections table · 125Every 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 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 29 September 2021 to 5 October 2021 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2021 to 5 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,759 hectares (37.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tsumkwe (3,773 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 1 October 2021 → 29 September 2021.

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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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 1 October 2021 to 5 October 2021. 125 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.

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.

Where it burned