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Bariadi fire, September 2020 Bariadi, Itilima

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2020, 23:01 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2020 in Bariadi, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,929 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Simiyu since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 12 in Tanzania in 2020, of 187.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bariadi · 2018Bariadi · 2016Bariadi · 2016Serengeti · 2018

Burnt area
13,929ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
9 Sept 2020 – 19 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
9 Sept
2020
Heat detections
389
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
230MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept19 Sept
18 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2020 · 39 MW · 26 10 Sept 2020 · 160 MW · 63 11 Sept 2020 · 82 MW · 9 13 Sept 2020 · 97 MW · 35 14 Sept 2020 · 129 MW · 8 15 Sept 2020 · 241 MW · 69 16 Sept 2020 · 140 MW · 46 17 Sept 2020 · 699 MW · 89 18 Sept 2020 · 478 MW · 44
9 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 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

31°high
44km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 337 ha in 2016, 2,422 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.8% of the area of London (139 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. Bariadi where it started
    12,138 ha reached on 9 Sept
    2.2 %
  2. Itilima
    1,884 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area1.8 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (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)
9 Sept 25.0 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Sept 27.5 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Sept 25.8 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Sept 24.6 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Sept 28.5 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Sept 27.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 28.7 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 30.7 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Sept 30.5 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept 29.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 28.9 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Sept after 27.4 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept after 28.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept after 27.7 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept after 29.6 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 29.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept after 26.7 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
26 Sept after 27.9 °C 30 % 32 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2020
After · 26 Sept 2020

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 · 389Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bariadi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2020 and 19 September 2020: 11 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,929 hectares (139.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bariadi (12,138 ha, 2.2 %); Itilima (1,884 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 389 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 geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 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.