How long did the Gurué fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 17 September 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 10 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,051 hectares (80.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gurué (8,091 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2026-09-01 → 2026-09-17

Gurué fire, 1 September 2026 Gurué

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2026, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2026 in Gurué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,051 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 206th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 110 in Mozambique in 2026, of 537.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gurué · 2017 Gurué · 2018 Gurué · 2016 Gurué · 2026

Burnt area: 8,051ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 1 Sept 2026 – 17 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 151; in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 99MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept17 Sept

Play back 17 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 17 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

30°high

50km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 21 Sept.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,297 ha in 2016, 4,713 ha in 2017, 5,658 ha in 2018, 2,621 ha in 2019, 2,239 ha in 2020, 1,143 ha in 2021, 7 ha in 2022, 2,051 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,331 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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

Gurué where it started

8,091 ha reached on 1 Sept

1.4 %

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 area30 ha

Residents≈ 4,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 30 hectares of built-up land and about 4,500 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)
1 Sept	27.4 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
2 Sept	27.5 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Sept	27.3 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Sept	27.6 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Sept	27.4 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Sept	27.6 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Sept	25.8 °C	37 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Sept	21.0 °C	52 %	50 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 18
9 Sept	22.2 °C	54 %	34 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 11
10 Sept	24.9 °C	52 %	30 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 8
11 Sept	26.0 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 14
12 Sept	27.6 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Sept	27.8 °C	30 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Sept	27.8 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Sept	29.6 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Sept	27.7 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Sept	27.1 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
18 Sept after	27.7 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
19 Sept after	26.4 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Sept after	26.7 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.3 mm	High 27
21 Sept after	26.5 °C	48 %	24 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2026

After · 24 Sept 2026

Before After

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 6 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM1067 µg/m³

Optical depth1.14

WHO 15

30311234567891011121314151617181920

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 · 151Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gurué fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 17 September 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 10 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,051 hectares (80.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gurué (8,091 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 1 September 2026 to 10 September 2026. 151 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.

Where it burned