Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Derre fire, 2 September 2016 Derre, Mocuba, Milange

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2016, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2016 in Derre, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 116,560 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 10th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). The largest in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Derre · 2025Mocuba · 2020Derre · 2022Derre · 2026

Burnt area
116,560ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
2 Sept 2016 – 2 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
2 Sept
2016
Heat detections
7,640
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
3.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept2 Oct
2 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2016 · 1,395 MW · 175 3 Sept 2016 · 2 MW · 3 4 Sept 2016 · 481 MW · 37 5 Sept 2016 · 1,466 MW · 99 6 Sept 2016 · 1,919 MW · 179 7 Sept 2016 · 2,790 MW · 240 8 Sept 2016 · 4,399 MW · 398 9 Sept 2016 · 14,459 MW · 843 10 Sept 2016 · 12,906 MW · 763 11 Sept 2016 · 2,644 MW · 159 12 Sept 2016 · 1,178 MW · 96 13 Sept 2016 · 3,066 MW · 306 14 Sept 2016 · 1,836 MW · 192 15 Sept 2016 · 1,844 MW · 177 16 Sept 2016 · 4,954 MW · 357 17 Sept 2016 · 12,160 MW · 1087 18 Sept 2016 · 6,634 MW · 801 19 Sept 2016 · 675 MW · 80 20 Sept 2016 · 143 MW · 25 21 Sept 2016 · 1,826 MW · 120 22 Sept 2016 · 2,297 MW · 186 23 Sept 2016 · 4,614 MW · 406 24 Sept 2016 · 2,245 MW · 216 25 Sept 2016 · 1,878 MW · 106 26 Sept 2016 · 947 MW · 67 27 Sept 2016 · 474 MW · 43 28 Sept 2016 · 3,191 MW · 234 29 Sept 2016 · 794 MW · 74 30 Sept 2016 · 1,454 MW · 81 1 Oct 2016 · 492 MW · 56 2 Oct 2016 · 440 MW · 34
2 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 22 Sept 27 Sept 2 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

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 3 Oct.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 74% of the area of London (1,166 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. Derre where it started
    54,923 ha
    12 %
  2. Mocuba
    33,801 ha
    3.8 %
  3. Milange
    16,428 ha
    3.0 %
  4. Morrumbala
    11,959 ha
    1.5 %

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 2015
Built-up area70 ha
Residents≈ 20,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 70 hectares of built-up land and about 20,000 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
2 Sept 28.4 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Sept 29.1 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Sept 30.6 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Sept 31.1 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept 33.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Sept 32.3 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 34.6 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Sept 35.3 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept 35.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept 31.7 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 31.2 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 32.6 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept 30.7 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept 32.4 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept 35.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept 36.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 34.9 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 31.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Sept 29.5 °C 35 % 32 km/h 1.0 mm High 22
21 Sept 32.3 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Sept 34.2 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept 35.7 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 36.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Sept 37.0 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Sept 31.5 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Sept 33.8 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Sept 36.6 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Sept 35.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept 34.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 36.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 37.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Oct after 26.2 °C 57 % 53 km/h 3.5 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2016
After · 9 Oct 2016

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 · 0Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Derre fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 September 2016 and 2 October 2016: 31 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 116,560 hectares (1,165.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Derre (54,923 ha, 12 %); Mocuba (33,801 ha, 3.8 %); Milange (16,428 ha, 3.0 %); Morrumbala (11,959 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 October 2016 → 2 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 26 August 2016 → 2 September 2016.
  3. Last day with fire: 2 October 2016 → 9 October 2016.
  4. Start date: 2 September 2016 → 26 August 2016.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 10 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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.