Itilima fire, August 2025 Itilima
The fire started on 30 August 2025 in Itilima, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,907 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Simiyu since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 11 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 18,907ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 30 Aug 2025 – 13 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 30 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 604
- in a single hotspot: 126 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 286MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,990 ha in 2016, 164 ha in 2020, 8,794 ha in 2021, 80 ha in 2022, 332 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,579 ha that had burned before.
- 3,599 ha Itilima fire, August 2021 5,482 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,098 ha Itilima fire, August 2021 3,662 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 106 ha Itilima fire, July 2016 12,451 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
-
Itilima where it started19,032 ha reached on 30 Aug4.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Aug | 29.1 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 31 Aug | 27.3 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Sept | 27.9 °C | 26 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Sept | 28.8 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Sept | 27.6 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Sept | 27.9 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Sept | 28.8 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Sept | 30.7 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Sept | 30.3 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Sept | 27.3 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Sept | 28.2 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Sept | 29.4 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Sept | 28.8 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Sept | 30.7 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Sept | 30.3 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 14 Sept after | 29.8 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Sept after | 29.6 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Sept after | 30.8 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Sept after | 28.7 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 18 Sept after | 29.6 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Sept after | 30.4 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Sept after | 29.4 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Sept after | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Sept after | 28.5 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
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 7 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 20 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 · 604Every 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 Itilima fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 August 2025 and 13 September 2025: 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 18,907 hectares (189.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Itilima (19,032 ha, 4.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (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.
Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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. 604 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.