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MZ · Mozambique · –

Gondola fire, October 2026 Gondola, Vanduzi

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2026, 11:49 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 15 October 2026 in Gondola, Mozambique. It was active for 9 days, with 263 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,430 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 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.

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.

Area with fire
≈ 3,430ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
9days
15 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
15 Oct
2026
Heat detections
263
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
189MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct23 Oct
23 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 2026 · 249 MW · 32 19 Oct 2026 · 173 MW · 30 20 Oct 2026 · 234 MW · 32 21 Oct 2026 · 38 MW · 8 22 Oct 2026 · 305 MW · 43 23 Oct 2026 · 135 MW · 32
18 Oct 20 Oct 22 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
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 24 Oct.

What happened to each town

  1. Gondola where it started
    2,324 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.9 %
  2. 1,120 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.4 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
15 Oct 33.0 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Oct 33.1 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Oct 33.4 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Oct 34.5 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Oct 37.1 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Oct 37.9 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
21 Oct 34.3 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
22 Oct 39.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
23 Oct 35.5 °C 38 % 41 km/h 3.0 mm High 27
24 Oct after 25.0 °C 77 % 41 km/h 6.5 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2026
After · 30 Oct 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 19 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1060 µg/m³
Optical depth0.72
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 · 263Every 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 Gondola fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 15 October 2026 to 23 October 2026 (9 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 3,430 hectares with fire (34.3 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 2 municipalities: Gondola (2,324 ha, 0.9 %); Vanduzi (1,120 ha, 0.4 %).
Is the Gondola fire still active?
No fire detections since 23 Oct 2026, 11:49 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

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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How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,430 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 263 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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.