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Lalaua fire, 23 August 2017 Lalaua

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2017, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 23 August 2017 in Lalaua, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,796 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 153th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 69 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lalaua · 2016Lalaua · 2016Lalaua · 2024Lalaua · 2026

Burnt area
4,796ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
23 Aug 2017 – 14 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Aug
2017
Heat detections
239
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Aug14 Sept
14 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

23 Aug 2017 · 422 MW · 21 24 Aug 2017 · 57 MW · 3 25 Aug 2017 · 257 MW · 33 26 Aug 2017 · 96 MW · 6 28 Aug 2017 · 22 MW · 2 29 Aug 2017 · 4 MW · 2 30 Aug 2017 · 62 MW · 9 31 Aug 2017 · 280 MW · 12 1 Sept 2017 · 209 MW · 13 2 Sept 2017 · 181 MW · 22 3 Sept 2017 · 29 MW · 8 4 Sept 2017 · 149 MW · 8 5 Sept 2017 · 404 MW · 21 6 Sept 2017 · 10 MW · 3 7 Sept 2017 · 111 MW · 16 8 Sept 2017 · 288 MW · 28 9 Sept 2017 · 259 MW · 14 10 Sept 2017 · 42 MW · 5 11 Sept 2017 · 19 MW · 4 12 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 2 14 Sept 2017 · 83 MW · 7
23 Aug 26 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
49km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,437 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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. Lalaua where it started
    4,827 ha reached on 23 Aug
    1.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area6.8 ha
Residents≈ 900

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.8 hectares of built-up land and about 900 residents (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)
29 Aug 27.1 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Aug 28.2 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Aug 28.3 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept 29.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Sept 29.7 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 27.3 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Sept 27.8 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Sept 28.7 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 29.6 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Sept 30.0 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 31.9 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 30.9 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 30.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 31.4 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 31.6 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Sept 32.2 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept 32.2 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept after 32.4 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept after 32.0 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept after 33.4 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept after 33.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept after 33.0 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept after 33.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Aug 2017
After · 21 Sept 2017

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 · 239Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lalaua fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 August 2017 to 14 September 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2017 to 10 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,796 hectares (48.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lalaua (4,827 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 September 2017 → 14 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 29 August 2017 → 23 August 2017.

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.

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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 29 August 2017 to 10 September 2017. 239 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.