Ile fire, October 2022 Alto Molocue, Ile
The fire started on 1 October 2022 in Ile, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,864 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 184th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 37 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,864ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 1 Oct 2022 – 15 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 1 Oct
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 492
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 326MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,019 ha in 2016, 2,748 ha in 2017, 4,937 ha in 2018, 2,136 ha in 2019, 4,643 ha in 2020, 966 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,588 ha that had burned before.
- 2,326 ha Ile fire, September 2018 5,559 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,321 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2020 16,546 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,674 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2018 5,568 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,469 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2016 3,083 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,197 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2019 4,824 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 917 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2016 5,156 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 63 ha Ile fire, September 2020 18,502 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
-
5,578 ha0.9 %
-
Ile where it started3,331 ha1.1 %
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.
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 Oct | 30.5 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Oct | 31.1 °C | 30 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 3 Oct | 31.1 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Oct | 32.8 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Oct | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 6 Oct | 32.6 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Oct | 32.4 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Oct | 31.7 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Oct | 31.2 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Oct | 31.2 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Oct | 30.5 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 12 Oct | 30.8 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Oct | 31.8 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Oct | 32.7 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 15 Oct | 32.1 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Oct after | 31.7 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Oct after | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Oct after | 30.0 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Oct after | 29.6 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Oct after | 31.0 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Oct after | 32.9 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Oct after | 32.6 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Oct after | 33.2 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 Oct after | 33.4 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 25 Oct after | 32.5 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
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.
Detections table · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ile fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2022 and 15 October 2022: 15 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 8,864 hectares (88.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Alto Molocue (5,578 ha, 0.9 %); Ile (3,331 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.
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 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.
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.