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Gurué fire, October 2023 Gurué, Malema

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2023, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2023 in Gurué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,388 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 447th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 64 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Malema · 2022Malema · 2020Gurué · 2018Gurué · 2017

Burnt area
4,388ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
2 Oct 2023 – 7 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
2 Oct
2023
Heat detections
156
in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
213MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct7 Oct
8 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2023 · 58 MW · 7 3 Oct 2023 · 17 MW · 2 4 Oct 2023 · 4 MW · 5 5 Oct 2023 · 83 MW · 10 6 Oct 2023 · 1,198 MW · 91 7 Oct 2023 · 127 MW · 19 8 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 1
2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 8 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

30°high
45km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,258 ha in 2016, 980 ha in 2017, 1,502 ha in 2019, 1,156 ha in 2020, 2,611 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,315 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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. Gurué where it started
    2,262 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Malema
    2,149 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.4 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.98 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.98 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Oct 29.5 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 24.2 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
4 Oct 27.0 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Oct 28.6 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Oct 29.7 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Oct 30.4 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Oct after 30.8 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Oct after 28.9 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct after 30.0 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Oct after 30.3 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Oct after 30.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Oct after 31.5 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Oct after 31.8 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Oct after 31.2 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Oct after 31.7 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
17 Oct after 29.9 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2023
After · 14 Oct 2023

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 2 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.49
3012345678910
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 · 156Every 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 Gurué fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 October 2023 and 7 October 2023: 6 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 4,388 hectares (43.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gurué (2,262 ha, 0.4 %); Malema (2,149 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

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. 156 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 2025, 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.