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Lalaua fire, 6 August 2018 Lalaua

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2018, 10:28 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2018 in Lalaua, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,049 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 380th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 210 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lalaua · 2016Lalaua · 2017Lalaua · 2026Lalaua · 2024

Burnt area
3,049ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
6 Aug 2018 – 23 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Aug
2018
Heat detections
106
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
71MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug23 Aug
22 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 2018 · 4 MW · 1 9 Aug 2018 · 17 MW · 4 10 Aug 2018 · 3 MW · 1 12 Aug 2018 · 250 MW · 21 13 Aug 2018 · 55 MW · 14 14 Aug 2018 · 29 MW · 4 15 Aug 2018 · 128 MW · 14 16 Aug 2018 · 247 MW · 26 17 Aug 2018 · 5 MW · 2 18 Aug 2018 · 59 MW · 7 20 Aug 2018 · 8 MW · 2 21 Aug 2018 · 106 MW · 5 22 Aug 2018 · 13 MW · 5
6 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug

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
26%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,209 ha in 2016, 2,437 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,662 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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
    3,070 ha reached on 6 Aug
    0.7 %

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 area2.0 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
12 Aug 29.1 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug 28.8 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug 28.7 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Aug 28.4 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Aug 28.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug 28.8 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Aug 29.4 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Aug 26.8 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Aug 28.8 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Aug 28.4 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Aug 28.6 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Aug 28.9 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Aug after 28.7 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Aug after 29.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Aug after 29.7 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Aug after 29.5 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Aug after 30.2 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2018
After · 30 Aug 2018

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 · 106Every 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 6 August 2018 to 23 August 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 August 2018 to 18 August 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,049 hectares (30.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lalaua (3,070 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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: 18 August 2018 → 23 August 2018.
  2. Start date: 12 August 2018 → 6 August 2018.

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 12 August 2018 to 18 August 2018. 106 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.