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Gorongosa fire, 30 August 2018 Gorongosa

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2018, 10:52 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2018 in Gorongosa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,903 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 35th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 28 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gorongosa · 2016Gorongosa · 2025Gorongosa · 2016Gorongosa · 2021

Burnt area
9,903ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
30 Aug 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Aug
2018
Heat detections
510
in a single hotspot: 125 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
371MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug10 Sept
11 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2018 · 37 MW · 7 31 Aug 2018 · 30 MW · 5 1 Sept 2018 · 157 MW · 8 2 Sept 2018 · 201 MW · 35 3 Sept 2018 · 487 MW · 57 4 Sept 2018 · 2,076 MW · 120 5 Sept 2018 · 388 MW · 40 6 Sept 2018 · 439 MW · 24 7 Sept 2018 · 533 MW · 73 8 Sept 2018 · 260 MW · 32 9 Sept 2018 · 52 MW · 3 10 Sept 2018 · 106 MW · 8 11 Sept 2018 · 52 MW · 5
30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept

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
50km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,304 ha in 2016, 1,319 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,940 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (99 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. Gorongosa where it started
    9,950 ha reached on 23 Aug
    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 2020
Built-up area17 ha
Residents≈ 6,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 17 hectares of built-up land and about 6,500 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)
23 Aug 32.1 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Aug 29.2 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Aug 28.5 °C 45 % 22 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 12
26 Aug 31.1 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
27 Aug 32.9 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Aug 25.8 °C 57 % 44 km/h 2.3 mm Low 9
29 Aug 25.5 °C 44 % 42 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 13
30 Aug 25.9 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
31 Aug 27.5 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Sept 28.9 °C 43 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
2 Sept 31.0 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Sept 34.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 34.9 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 34.3 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 34.4 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept 34.1 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 35.5 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Sept 34.0 °C 30 % 50 km/h 6.7 mm Moderate 19
10 Sept 24.9 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
11 Sept after 27.9 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
12 Sept after 29.5 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
13 Sept after 32.4 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Sept after 33.5 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Sept after 34.3 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Sept after 34.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept after 34.5 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Sept after 36.2 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept after 36.2 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept after 36.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 30.9 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
22 Sept after 31.6 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept after 30.6 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
24 Sept after 32.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept after 32.6 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Sept after 37.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Sept after 35.8 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2018
After · 17 Sept 2018

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 · 510Every 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 Gorongosa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 August 2018 and 10 September 2018: 12 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 9,903 hectares (99.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gorongosa (9,950 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 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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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. 510 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.