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ZM · Zambia · Lusaka

Wildfires in Kafue

Kafue, Zambia, has had 19 large fires recorded by GWIS since 2016: 102,461 hectares burned inside its boundaries, 23% of its area. Fire danger today: extreme (FWI 60).

Only fires of 3,000 ha or more get an entry: smaller ones are not in the lists or the totals on this page.

Fire danger, today and the coming days

FWI computed from the Open-Meteo forecast
  1. Wed 4 Extreme 37° · 16 % · 45 km/h
  2. Thu 5 Extreme 35° · 21 % · 38 km/h
  3. Fri 6 Extreme 36° · 21 % · 32 km/h
  4. Sat 7 Very high 37° · 21 % · 35 km/h
  5. Sun 8 Extreme 36° · 20 % · 38 km/h
  6. Mon 9 Very high 34° · 29 % · 49 km/h
  7. Tue 10 High 32° · 36 % · 34 km/h
  8. Wed 11 Very high 34° · 24 % · 32 km/h

Canadian Fire Weather Index, the same system Copernicus uses, computed by WorldFires from the weather forecast and two months of past weather for fuel state. It is an estimate per municipality, not an official warning: warnings are issued by each country’s emergency service. Put this widget on your website

Smoke today in Kafue: hourly forecast

The municipality and its fires

Since 2016

102,461
hectares burned
23 %
of its area
19
fires
4,511
km²

How many times has Kafue burned?

Kafue has burned 19 times since 2016, in 9 years: 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026. The most recent: Kafue fire, 14 October 2026, with 3,207 hectares inside the municipality. Together they add up to 102,461 hectares burned inside the municipality, but the distinct burned area is 62,307 hectares, 14 % of its surface: part of it burned more than once.

  1. 2× 16
  2.   17
  3. 2× 18
  4. 2× 19
  5. 1× 20
  6. 2× 21
  7. 2× 22
  8. 1× 23
  9.   24
  10. 1× 25
  11. 6× 26
19
fires
9
years with fire
102,461
cumulative ha
62,307
distinct ha

Fires larger than 3,000 hectares with a perimeter since 2016 that reached the municipality, even partly. Cumulative hectares add up every fire; the distinct area counts land that burned several times only once. Perimeters and boundaries overlaid by WorldFires.

Where it has burned most often in Zambia

Fires that entered Kafue

  1. 3,207 ha Kafue fire, 14 October 2026 where it started 0.7% of the municipality · 3,252 ha in total · 13 days
  2. 174 ha Rufunsa fire, 14 October 2026 0.0% of the municipality · 3,345 ha in total · 11 days
  3. 5,752 ha Kafue fire, 13 October 2026 where it started 1.3% of the municipality · 5,721 ha in total · 15 days
  4. 3,047 ha Rufunsa fire, 11 October 2026 0.7% of the municipality · 6,507 ha in total · 19 days
  5. 5,178 ha Kafue fire, 14 September 2026 where it started 1.2% of the municipality · 5,147 ha in total · 6 days
  6. 3,159 ha Kafue fire, 13 September 2026 where it started 0.7% of the municipality · 3,140 ha in total · 5 days
  7. 9,357 ha Kafue fire, September 2025 where it started 2.1% of the municipality · 9,301 ha in total · 13 days
  8. 1,788 ha Kafue fire, September 2023 where it started 0.4% of the municipality · 3,253 ha in total · 9 days
  9. 13,249 ha Kafue fire, October 2022 where it started 2.9% of the municipality · 14,407 ha in total · 18 days
  10. 3,278 ha Kafue fire, September 2022 where it started 0.7% of the municipality · 3,259 ha in total · 14 days
  11. 6,100 ha Rufunsa fire, November 2021 1.4% of the municipality · 7,107 ha in total · 11 days
  12. 3,320 ha Kafue fire, September 2021 where it started 0.7% of the municipality · 3,300 ha in total · 10 days
  13. 3,142 ha Kafue fire, October 2020 where it started 0.7% of the municipality · 3,138 ha in total · 5 days
  14. 4,239 ha Kafue fire, October 2019 where it started 0.9% of the municipality · 4,289 ha in total · 7 days
  15. 130 ha Rufunsa fire, 23 October 2019 0.0% of the municipality · 5,150 ha in total · 17 days
  16. 156 ha Rufunsa fire, October 2018 0.0% of the municipality · 3,893 ha in total · 8 days
  17. 25,394 ha Kafue fire, September 2018 where it started 5.6% of the municipality · 31,689 ha in total · 19 days
  18. 4,510 ha Kafue fire, October 2016 where it started 1.0% of the municipality · 4,484 ha in total · 10 days
  19. 7,282 ha Rufunsa fire, 1 September 2016 1.6% of the municipality · 15,933 ha in total · 32 days

Where this data comes from

Perimeters come from GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), rebuilt from heat detections, and municipal boundaries from geoBoundaries/GRID3, Office of the Surveyor General (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing both. The forecast is from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).

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