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Kasulu fire, 9 July 2016 Kasulu, Kibondo

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2016, 12:12 UTC

The fire started on 9 July 2016 in Kasulu, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,037 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 37th largest in Kigoma since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 54 in Tanzania in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kibondo · 2021Kibondo · 2017Kibondo · 2019Kibondo · 2016

Burnt area
5,037ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
9 Jul 2016 – 15 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
9 Jul
2016
Heat detections
147
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
158MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jul15 Jul
15 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jul 2016 · 69 MW · 8 10 Jul 2016 · 427 MW · 26 11 Jul 2016 · 300 MW · 45 12 Jul 2016 · 118 MW · 18 13 Jul 2016 · 15 MW · 2 15 Jul 2016 · 18 MW · 4
9 Jul 10 Jul 11 Jul 12 Jul 13 Jul 15 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
42km/h · peak gust
30%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 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Kasulu where it started
    5,063 ha reached on 3 Jul
    0.7 %
  2. Kibondo
    10 ha
    0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
9 Jul 28.5 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jul 28.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jul 27.9 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Jul 27.6 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jul 28.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Jul 28.4 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul 29.4 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul after 29.9 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jul after 29.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul after 28.9 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul after 29.5 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jul after 29.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul after 30.4 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul after 30.0 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jul after 30.6 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul after 29.9 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Jul after 30.5 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jul 2016
After · 22 Jul 2016

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 · 147Every 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 Kasulu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 July 2016 and 15 July 2016: 7 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 5,037 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kasulu (5,063 ha, 0.7 %); Kibondo (10 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 147 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 2015, 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.