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Guro fire, 13 October 2021 Guro, Tambara

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2021, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2021 in Guro, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,731 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 122th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 149 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guro · 2026Guro · 2026Guro · 2016Guro · 2026

Burnt area
3,731ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
13 Oct 2021 – 21 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
13 Oct
2021
Heat detections
146
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
132MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct21 Oct
22 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2021 · 13 MW · 2 14 Oct 2021 · 30 MW · 2 15 Oct 2021 · 277 MW · 14 16 Oct 2021 · 260 MW · 29 17 Oct 2021 · 368 MW · 58 18 Oct 2021 · 53 MW · 9 21 Oct 2021 · 28 MW · 2 22 Oct 2021 · 25 MW · 4
13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 21 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

43°high
64km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 239 ha in 2019, 1 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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. Guro where it started
    3,310 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.5 %
  2. Tambara
    436 ha reached on 10 Oct
    0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
13 Oct 33.2 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Oct 35.6 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
15 Oct 38.4 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Oct 40.2 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Oct 42.6 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Oct 37.3 °C 35 % 58 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 58
19 Oct 30.7 °C 44 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Oct 27.0 °C 50 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Oct 31.3 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Oct after 36.7 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Oct after 40.7 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Oct after 43.5 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
25 Oct after 35.4 °C 39 % 62 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 49
26 Oct after 34.9 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Oct after 33.0 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Oct after 30.4 °C 43 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Oct after 29.9 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Oct after 36.5 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Oct after 38.3 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2021
After · 28 Oct 2021

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 · 146Every 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 Guro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 October 2021 and 21 October 2021: 9 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 3,731 hectares (37.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guro (3,310 ha, 0.5 %); Tambara (436 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
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. 146 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.