Hwange fire, 30 August 2022 Hwange
The fire started on 30 August 2022 in Hwange, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,583 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 276th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 487 with a page). Number 139 in Zimbabwe in 2022, of 346.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Hwange · 2017Hwange · 2019Hwange · 2021Hwange · 2016
- Burnt area
- 1,583ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 30 Aug 2022 – 2 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 30 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 41
- in a single hotspot: 11 MW
- Average daily power
- 92MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22 ha in 2016, 1,063 ha in 2017, 389 ha in 2019, 92 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,262 ha that had burned before.
- 1,063 ha Hwange fire, September 2017 8,120 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 389 ha Hwange fire, September 2019 1,990 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Hwange fire, October 2021 1,218 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 22 ha Hwange fire, October 2016 6,002 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started1,587 ha reached on 30 Aug0.1 %
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 2020Inside 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
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 30 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 41Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,654 haHwange25 September 2022 · 21 days · 6 km away
- 11,187 haHwange2 September 2017 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 8,132 haHwange13 October 2026 · 9 days · 22 km away
- 10,975 haHwange30 September 2019 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 35,803 haHwange22 September 2022 · 27 days · 28 km away
- 15,800 haHwange10 October 2021 · 8 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Hwange fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2022 to 2 September 2022 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2022 to 2 September 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,583 hectares (15.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Hwange (1,587 ha, 0.1 %).
- 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.
- Start date: 31 August 2022 → 30 August 2022.
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.
Report an error
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 31 August 2022 to 2 September 2022. 41 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.