How long did the Hwange fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2018 and 21 October 2018: 16 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 24,712 hectares (247.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hwange (20,529 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ZW · Zimbabwe · 2018-10-06 → 2018-10-21

Hwange fire, 6 October 2018 Hwange

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2018, 22:54 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2018 in Hwange, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,712 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 488 with a page). Number 3 in Zimbabwe in 2018, of 265.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chobe · 2016 Hwange · 2016 Chobe · 2022 Chobe · 2026

Burnt area: 24,712ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 6 Oct 2018 – 21 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 6 Oct; 2018
Heat detections: 776; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 632MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct21 Oct

Play back 21 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 19 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

37°high

61km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,286 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (247 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

Hwange where it started

20,529 ha

0.8 %

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 area0.59 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.59 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
6 Oct	33.3 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
7 Oct	32.3 °C	14 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
8 Oct	32.3 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
9 Oct	32.0 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
10 Oct	32.5 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
11 Oct	34.4 °C	11 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
12 Oct	35.9 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
13 Oct	36.8 °C	10 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
14 Oct	36.2 °C	16 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
15 Oct	35.6 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
16 Oct	35.6 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 44
17 Oct	36.5 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
18 Oct	37.2 °C	12 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Oct	36.8 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
20 Oct	36.0 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Oct	32.8 °C	29 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
22 Oct after	26.9 °C	28 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
23 Oct after	27.3 °C	19 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Oct after	26.9 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Oct after	30.0 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 47
26 Oct after	32.5 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
27 Oct after	34.2 °C	13 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
28 Oct after	33.3 °C	14 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
29 Oct after	34.1 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Oct after	35.8 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
31 Oct after	37.4 °C	8 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2018

After · 28 Oct 2018

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.

Detections table · 0Every 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 Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hwange fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2018 and 21 October 2018: 16 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 24,712 hectares (247.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hwange (20,529 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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?

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

Where it burned