How long did the Liwale fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2017 and 23 October 2017: 9 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 3,310 hectares (33.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Liwale (3,342 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2017-10-15 → 2017-10-23

Liwale fire, 15 October 2017 Liwale

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2017, 10:11 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2017 in Liwale, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,310 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Lindi since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 81 in Tanzania in 2017, of 104.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liwale · 2017 Tunduru · 2017 Liwale · 2025

Burnt area: 3,310ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 15 Oct 2017 – 23 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 15 Oct; 2017
Heat detections: 97; in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 71MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 23 Oct 2017

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct23 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 21 Oct 23 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

40km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 55 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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

Liwale where it started

3,342 ha reached on 15 Oct

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
15 Oct	31.1 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Oct	32.4 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Oct	33.1 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Oct	33.1 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Oct	31.4 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Oct	33.0 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Oct	31.9 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Oct	31.0 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Oct	33.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Oct after	30.5 °C	39 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Oct after	29.6 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Oct after	30.4 °C	49 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
27 Oct after	30.3 °C	44 %	33 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
28 Oct after	30.4 °C	45 %	30 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Oct 2017

After · 30 Oct 2017

Before After

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 · 97Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Liwale fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2017 and 23 October 2017: 9 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 3,310 hectares (33.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Liwale (3,342 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 97 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.

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.

Where it burned