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Kaliua fire, 15 June 2019 Kaliua

Out · last detection 23 Jun 2019, 11:52 UTC

The fire started on 15 June 2019 in Kaliua, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 42th largest in Tabora since 2016 (of 44 with a page). Number 117 in Tanzania in 2019, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2026Urambo · 2026Kaliua · 2021Mlele · 2022

Burnt area
3,114ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
15 Jun 2019 – 23 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Jun
2019
Heat detections
76
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
60MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jun23 Jun
23 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jun 2019 · 12 MW · 2 16 Jun 2019 · 35 MW · 5 17 Jun 2019 · 22 MW · 6 18 Jun 2019 · 87 MW · 13 19 Jun 2019 · 150 MW · 25 20 Jun 2019 · 81 MW · 10 21 Jun 2019 · 41 MW · 5 22 Jun 2019 · 111 MW · 9 23 Jun 2019 · 5 MW · 1
15 Jun 17 Jun 19 Jun 21 Jun 23 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

30°high
40km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 187 ha in 2016, 1,607 ha in 2017, 4 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,590 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Kaliua where it started
    3,138 ha reached on 15 Jun
    0.2 %

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)
15 Jun 29.1 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Jun 29.3 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Jun 29.2 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Jun 29.4 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jun 29.3 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Jun 30.0 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jun 29.5 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jun 29.7 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jun 29.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jun after 30.2 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Jun after 29.5 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Jun after 28.3 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Jun after 29.3 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jun after 29.8 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jun after 29.5 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Jun after 29.5 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Jul after 30.0 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Jul after 29.4 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jun 2019
After · 30 Jun 2019

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 · 76Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kaliua fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 June 2019 to 23 June 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 June 2019 to 22 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,114 hectares (31.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kaliua (3,138 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 June 2019 → 23 June 2019.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 15 June 2019 to 22 June 2019. 76 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.