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Hwange fire, 14 October 2018 Hwange

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2018, 23:56 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2018 in Hwange, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,966 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 487 with a page). Number 4 in Zimbabwe in 2018, of 265.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hwange · 2022Chobe · 2026Chobe · 2020Hwange · 2018

Burnt area
11,966ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
14 Oct 2018 – 23 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Oct
2018
Heat detections
378
in a single hotspot: 292 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
768MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct23 Oct
23 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2018 · 61 MW · 2 16 Oct 2018 · 6 MW · 5 17 Oct 2018 · 118 MW · 19 18 Oct 2018 · 4,807 MW · 249 19 Oct 2018 · 145 MW · 36 20 Oct 2018 · 218 MW · 31 21 Oct 2018 · 1,505 MW · 27 22 Oct 2018 · 54 MW · 6 23 Oct 2018 · 2 MW · 3
15 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 23 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
60km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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. Hwange where it started
    11,992 ha reached on 16 Oct
    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 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)
14 Oct 35.7 °C 17 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
15 Oct 35.4 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Oct 35.5 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 44
17 Oct 36.2 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Oct 37.1 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Oct 36.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Oct 35.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Oct 32.1 °C 30 % 60 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 58
22 Oct 26.7 °C 28 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Oct 26.6 °C 19 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Oct after 26.4 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Oct after 29.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Oct after 32.3 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Oct after 33.7 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Oct after 32.5 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
29 Oct after 33.6 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Oct after 35.4 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Oct after 37.0 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Nov after 36.8 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 63
2 Nov after 37.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Oct 2018
After · 30 Oct 2018

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 · 378Every 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 Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hwange fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 October 2018 to 23 October 2018 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 October 2018 to 23 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,966 hectares (119.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hwange (11,992 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 16 October 2018 → 14 October 2018.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 October 2018 to 23 October 2018. 378 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.