Gorongosa fire, 17 September 2021 Gorongosa
The fire started on 17 September 2021 in Gorongosa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,610 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 2 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 22,610ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 17 Sept 2021 – 2 Oct 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 17 Sept
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 1,143
- in a single hotspot: 80 MW
- Danger at start
- 7
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 872MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 3 Oct.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,447 ha in 2016, 10,140 ha in 2017, 10,220 ha in 2018, 12,602 ha in 2019, 8,896 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,655 ha that had burned before.
- 6,927 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2016 11,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,659 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2020 5,262 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,235 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2018 4,542 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,155 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2020 5,054 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,644 ha Gorongosa fire, August 2019 4,532 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 841 ha Gorongosa fire, October 2017 3,051 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 619 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2018 3,166 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Gorongosa where it started22,741 ha reached on 17 Sept3.3 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 15 hectares of built-up land and about 4,100 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Sept | 29.0 °C | 54 % | 37 km/h | 1.6 mm | Low 7 |
| 18 Sept | 19.7 °C | 78 % | 38 km/h | 9.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 19 Sept | 23.6 °C | 49 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very low 1 |
| 20 Sept | 26.4 °C | 40 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 21 Sept | 29.5 °C | 36 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 22 Sept | 21.7 °C | 68 % | 41 km/h | 4.6 mm | Very low 1 |
| 23 Sept | 22.7 °C | 61 % | 30 km/h | 1.7 mm | Very low 1 |
| 24 Sept | 26.7 °C | 49 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 25 Sept | 27.8 °C | 41 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 26 Sept | 29.9 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 27 Sept | 30.2 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 28 Sept | 32.3 °C | 41 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 29 Sept | 31.9 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 30 Sept | 27.3 °C | 59 % | 41 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 Oct | 29.3 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 2 Oct | 34.7 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 3 Oct after | 33.7 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 1.9 mm | Low 8 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 1,143Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,157 haGorongosa1 September 2023 · 19 days · 2 km away
- 19,369 haGorongosa23 September 2022 · 29 days · 7 km away
- 11,928 haGorongosa2 September 2016 · 30 days · 7 km away
- 59,348 haGorongosa20 August 2025 · 45 days · 21 km away
- 60,863 haGorongosa30 August 2026 · 31 days · 26 km away
- 16,281 haGorongosa20 September 2022 · 27 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gorongosa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2021 to 2 October 2021 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 September 2021 to 2 October 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 22,610 hectares (226.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gorongosa (22,741 ha, 3.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 24 September 2021 → 17 September 2021.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 September 2021 to 2 October 2021. 1,143 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.
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.