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Liwale fire, July 2023 Liwale

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2023, 11:28 UTC

The fire started on 11 July 2023 in Liwale, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,361 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 24th largest in Lindi since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 21 in Tanzania in 2023, of 44.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liwale · 2020Liwale · 2019Liwale · 2020Liwale · 2019

Burnt area
4,361ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
11 Jul 2023 – 16 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Jul
2023
Heat detections
123
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
132MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jul16 Jul
16 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jul 2023 · 34 MW · 7 12 Jul 2023 · 504 MW · 50 13 Jul 2023 · 123 MW · 26 14 Jul 2023 · 69 MW · 19 15 Jul 2023 · 38 MW · 9 16 Jul 2023 · 22 MW · 4
11 Jul 12 Jul 13 Jul 14 Jul 15 Jul 16 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

33°high
45km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 456 ha in 2016, 893 ha in 2020, 843 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,017 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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. Liwale where it started
    4,380 ha reached on 10 Jul
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
11 Jul 33.3 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Jul 31.9 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jul 30.4 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul 31.9 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Jul 31.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Jul 31.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jul after 31.1 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jul after 32.2 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jul after 30.9 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul after 33.2 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jul after 33.0 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Jul after 32.7 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jul after 29.0 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Jul after 32.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Jul after 33.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 31.2 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jul 2023
After · 23 Jul 2023

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 · 123Every 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 Liwale fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 July 2023 and 16 July 2023: 6 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 4,361 hectares (43.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Liwale (4,380 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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. 123 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 2025, 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.