How long did the Gilé fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 September 2021 to 15 October 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2021 to 8 October 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,716 hectares (67.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gilé (6,761 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2021-09-21 → 2021-10-15

Gilé fire, 21 September 2021 Gilé

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2021, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 21 September 2021 in Gilé, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,716 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 251th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 45 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gilé · 2019 Gilé · 2017 Gilé · 2016 Gilé · 2020

Burnt area: 6,716ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 21 Sept 2021 – 15 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 21 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 211; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 145MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Sept15 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

21 Sept 28 Sept 2 Oct 5 Oct 9 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

36°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 572 ha in 2016, 2,155 ha in 2017, 527 ha in 2018, 2,142 ha in 2019, 339 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,030 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 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

Gilé where it started

6,761 ha reached on 21 Sept

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 2020

Built-up area10 ha

Residents≈ 1,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 10 hectares of built-up land and about 1,100 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)
21 Sept	32.8 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Sept	29.5 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
23 Sept	27.9 °C	47 %	31 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 12
24 Sept	30.1 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Sept	30.7 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
26 Sept	31.2 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Sept	32.1 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 Sept	34.8 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
29 Sept	35.7 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Sept	32.7 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
1 Oct	32.2 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
2 Oct	34.7 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
3 Oct	34.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Oct	35.2 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Oct	32.1 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Oct	32.4 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
7 Oct	31.2 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Oct	29.0 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Oct	32.1 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Oct	35.1 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Oct	31.6 °C	34 %	49 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 44
12 Oct	28.0 °C	40 %	42 km/h	1.3 mm	High 22
13 Oct	30.9 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Oct	32.7 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Oct	36.5 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Oct after	36.4 °C	22 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
17 Oct after	35.8 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
18 Oct after	34.4 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Oct after	30.7 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Oct after	27.4 °C	58 %	42 km/h	2.9 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Sept 2021

After · 22 Oct 2021

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.

Detections table · 211Every 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 Gilé fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 September 2021 to 15 October 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2021 to 8 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,716 hectares (67.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gilé (6,761 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 October 2021 → 15 October 2021.
26 October 2026 Start date: 28 September 2021 → 21 September 2021.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 September 2021 to 8 October 2021. 211 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.

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