Zambezi fire, 4 September 2025 Zambezi
The fire started on 4 September 2025 in Zambezi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,281 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 227th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 287 with a page). Number 222 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,281ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 4 Sept 2025 – 21 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 127
- in a single hotspot: 295 MW
- Danger at start
- 59
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 138MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 29 Sept.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 478 ha in 2016, 297 ha in 2017, 475 ha in 2018, 714 ha in 2019, 1,656 ha in 2020, 2,208 ha in 2022, 1,304 ha in 2023, 2,288 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,131 ha that had burned before.
- 2,046 ha Zambezi fire, September 2022 4,393 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,615 ha Zambezi fire, October 2020 4,542 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,328 ha Zambezi fire, August 2024 3,810 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
-
Zambezi where it started3,297 ha reached on 4 Sept0.2 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Sept | 32.2 °C | 13 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 6 Sept | 32.8 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Sept | 33.9 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Sept | 33.7 °C | 12 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Sept | 34.0 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 10 Sept | 33.3 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Sept | 33.3 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 12 Sept | 32.8 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Sept | 29.0 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Sept | 33.9 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Sept | 34.5 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 16 Sept | 35.5 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Sept | 35.5 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Sept | 36.1 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Sept | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 20 Sept | 34.7 °C | 19 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Sept | 33.8 °C | 18 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 22 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 23 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Sept after | 36.2 °C | 12 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 25 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 26 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 14 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 27 Sept after | 34.9 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 28 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 19 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 3 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 57: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 127Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,542 haZambeziOctober 2020 · 7 days · 5 km away
- 4,726 haZambezi1 October 2025 · 15 days · 9 km away
- 7,344 haZambezi1 October 2025 · 10 days · 24 km away
- 7,172 haZambezi19 August 2026 · 24 days · 24 km away
- 6,301 haZambezi8 September 2026 · 12 days · 35 km away
- 5,021 haZambezi6 September 2025 · 7 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Zambezi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2025 to 21 September 2025 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2025 to 21 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,281 hectares (32.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Zambezi (3,297 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 5 September 2025 → 4 September 2025.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2025 to 21 September 2025. 127 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 2025, 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.