How long did the Bárue fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2026 to 23 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,695 hectares (47.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bárue (4,712 ha, 0.8 %).

Is the Bárue fire still active?

Yes: satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 12:17 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2026-10-12 → 2026-10-27

Bárue fire, 12 October 2026 Bárue

Burning · last detection 27 Oct 2026, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2026 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,695 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 80th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 230 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bárue · 2017 Bárue · 2016 Bárue · 2017 Macossa · 2026

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 12:17 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 4,695ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 12 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 12 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 53MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct27 Oct

Play back 27 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 23 Oct 27 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

39°high

52km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 825 ha in 2016, 2,512 ha in 2017, 74 ha in 2018, 966 ha in 2019, 2,853 ha in 2020, 1,749 ha in 2021, 765 ha in 2022, 1,303 ha in 2023, 657 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,221 ha that had burned before.

1,547 ha Bárue fire, October 2017 3,333 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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

Bárue where it started

4,712 ha reached on 13 Oct

0.8 %

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 2025

Built-up area5.3 ha

Residents≈ 850

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.3 hectares of built-up land and about 850 residents (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
12 Oct	29.3 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
13 Oct	32.1 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
14 Oct	32.7 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
15 Oct	32.2 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
16 Oct	32.2 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
17 Oct	32.5 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Oct	33.5 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Oct	35.4 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Oct	37.5 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Oct	35.8 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Oct	37.7 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
23 Oct	38.7 °C	21 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Oct	30.4 °C	57 %	52 km/h	4.6 mm	Low 7
25 Oct	29.8 °C	53 %	34 km/h	7.8 mm	Very low 2
26 Oct	32.8 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
27 Oct	35.0 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Oct 2026

After · 26 Oct 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1030 µg/m³

Optical depth0.42

WHO 15

101112131415161718

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 74Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bárue fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2026 to 23 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,695 hectares (47.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bárue (4,712 ha, 0.8 %).
Is the Bárue fire still active?: Yes: satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 12:17 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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 12 October 2026 to 23 October 2026. 74 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.

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.