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TZ · Tanzania · –

Chemba fire, 29 October 2026 Chemba, Manyoni, Ikungi

Burning · last detection 7 Nov 2026, 23:16 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 29 October 2026 in Chemba, Tanzania. It has been active for 10 days, with 250 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,010 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 7 Nov 2026, 23:16 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.

Area with fire
≈ 3,010ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
29 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
29 Oct
2026
Heat detections
250
in a single hotspot: 372 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Oct7 Nov
7 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Oct 2026 · 738 MW · 47 30 Oct 2026 · 842 MW · 19 31 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 1 Nov 2026 · 96 MW · 13 2 Nov 2026 · 460 MW · 26 3 Nov 2026 · 24 MW · 4 4 Nov 2026 · 1,190 MW · 44 5 Nov 2026 · 457 MW · 16 6 Nov 2026 · 573 MW · 41 7 Nov 2026 · 5,138 MW · 81
29 Oct 31 Oct 2 Nov 4 Nov 7 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. 1,806 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. Manyoni where it started
    1,204 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.0 %
  3. 0 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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.

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)
29 Oct 36.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Oct 35.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
31 Oct 34.1 °C 28 % 44 km/h 1.6 mm Extreme 52
1 Nov 34.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 42
2 Nov 34.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Nov 34.8 °C 26 % 32 km/h 1.1 mm Very high 42
4 Nov 34.7 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
5 Nov 34.9 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Nov 35.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Nov 35.5 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Nov after 34.7 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Oct 2026
After · 7 Nov 2026

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 24 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1035 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
13 Oct16 Oct19 Oct22 Oct
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 · 250Every 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 Chemba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 29 October 2026 to 7 November 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 3,010 hectares with fire (30.1 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chemba (1,806 ha, 0.2 %); Manyoni (1,204 ha, 0.0 %); Ikungi (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Chemba fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 7 Nov 2026, 23:16 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Page published (≈ 3,192 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,010 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 250 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.