How long did the Chiúre fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2026 and 19 August 2026: 9 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 4,359 hectares (43.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chiúre (4,385 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2026-08-11 → 2026-08-19

Chiúre fire, 11 August 2026 Chiúre

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2026, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2026 in Chiúre, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,359 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 45th largest in Cabo Delgado since 2016 (of 120 with a page). Number 266 in Mozambique in 2026, of 532.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chiúre · 2026 Namuno · 2026 Chiúre · 2026 Namuno · 2025

Burnt area: 4,359ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 11 Aug 2026 – 19 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 11 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 113; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 58MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug19 Aug

Play back 20 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

50km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 796 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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

Chiúre where it started

4,385 ha reached on 5 Aug

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 area8.2 ha

Residents≈ 850

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.2 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
5 Aug	27.8 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Aug	29.8 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Aug	30.1 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Aug	28.6 °C	47 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
9 Aug	28.6 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
10 Aug	29.3 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
11 Aug	30.4 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Aug	31.0 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Aug	30.1 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Aug	27.4 °C	42 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Aug	28.1 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Aug	27.9 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Aug	28.3 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Aug	28.5 °C	35 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Aug	28.3 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Aug after	29.0 °C	48 %	32 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
21 Aug after	30.6 °C	47 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
22 Aug after	32.7 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Aug after	31.7 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Aug after	30.7 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug after	30.5 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Aug after	30.0 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Aug after	30.2 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Aug after	29.0 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
29 Aug after	28.4 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.5 mm	High 33
30 Aug after	28.2 °C	53 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
31 Aug after	28.7 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
1 Sept after	29.1 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Sept after	29.4 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Sept after	29.4 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Sept after	32.1 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Sept after	31.1 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Aug 2026

After · 26 Aug 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 17 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1028 µg/m³

Optical depth0.47

WHO 15

34567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829

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 · 113Every 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 Chiúre fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2026 and 19 August 2026: 9 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 4,359 hectares (43.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chiúre (4,385 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 113 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 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.

Where it burned