Bárue fire, 17 September 2022 Bárue, Macossa
The fire started on 17 September 2022 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,737 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 21th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 32 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Bárue · 2021Bárue · 2017Bárue · 2020Macossa · 2019
- Burnt area
- 9,737ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 30days
- 17 Sept 2022 – 16 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 17 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 556
- in a single hotspot: 162 MW
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 316MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 21 Oct.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,102 ha in 2016, 5,061 ha in 2017, 2,785 ha in 2018, 1,364 ha in 2019, 2,268 ha in 2020, 6,711 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,579 ha that had burned before.
- 2,379 ha Bárue fire, September 2021 3,362 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,131 ha Bárue fire, September 2017 12,745 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,130 ha Bárue fire, August 2020 3,581 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 405 ha Macossa fire, August 2019 4,252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 326 ha Bárue fire, September 2021 3,116 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 203 ha Macossa fire, September 2017 8,708 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 140 ha Bárue fire, September 2020 5,233 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
-
Bárue where it started9,540 ha reached on 17 Sept1.6 %
-
251 ha reached on 18 Sept0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 9.9 hectares of built-up land and about 1,900 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Sept | 29.2 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 18 Sept | 31.1 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Sept | 34.1 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Sept | 35.4 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Sept | 30.7 °C | 41 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 22 Sept | 32.0 °C | 36 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 23 Sept | 31.4 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 24 Sept | 31.0 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Sept | 31.0 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 26 Sept | 31.5 °C | 32 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Sept | 32.5 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Sept | 28.5 °C | 41 % | 39 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Sept | 29.2 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 30 Sept | 30.4 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 1 Oct | 32.0 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Oct | 31.2 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 3 Oct | 33.4 °C | 23 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Oct | 34.9 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Oct | 32.9 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 6 Oct | 34.0 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Oct | 35.0 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Oct | 29.9 °C | 41 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Oct | 32.0 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Oct | 33.4 °C | 27 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 11 Oct | 30.6 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 12 Oct | 32.1 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Oct | 33.4 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Oct | 34.2 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 15 Oct | 33.0 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Oct | 30.7 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Oct after | 30.9 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Oct after | 31.1 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Oct after | 30.5 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Oct after | 32.2 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 1.9 mm | Moderate 14 |
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 14 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 155 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 85: 5.7 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 · 556Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 27,713 haMacossa1 September 2023 · 25 days · 5 km away
- 13,314 haBárue11 September 2026 · 18 days · 10 km away
- 30,185 haMacossa22 August 2025 · 39 days · 11 km away
- 25,445 haBárue5 September 2016 · 18 days · 11 km away
- 12,745 haBárue18 September 2017 · 30 days · 14 km away
- 13,764 haBárue9 September 2022 · 23 days · 20 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bárue fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2022 to 16 October 2022 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2022 to 9 October 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,737 hectares (97.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bárue (9,540 ha, 1.6 %); Macossa (251 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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.
- Last day with fire: 9 October 2022 → 16 October 2022.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2022 to 9 October 2022. 556 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.
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.