How long did the Liwale fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2025 and 10 September 2025: 13 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 6,138 hectares (61.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Liwale (6,184 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2025-08-29 → 2025-09-10

Liwale fire, 29 August 2025 Liwale

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2025, 10:32 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2025 in Liwale, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Lindi since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 44 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.

Burnt area: 6,138ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 29 Aug 2025 – 10 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 190; in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 1.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 10 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2930311234567810

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

41km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,599 ha in 2017, 1,828 ha in 2019, 557 ha in 2020, 1,977 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,587 ha that had burned before.

1,599 ha Liwale fire, September 2017 3,630 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Liwale where it started

6,184 ha reached on 26 Aug

0.2 %

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)
29 Aug	30.9 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Aug	29.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Aug	31.1 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Sept	31.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Sept	31.5 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Sept	29.7 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Sept	31.4 °C	25 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Sept	31.8 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Sept	31.1 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
7 Sept	30.6 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Sept	29.5 °C	47 %	28 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 20
9 Sept	30.9 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
10 Sept	32.0 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Sept after	31.2 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Sept after	30.7 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Sept after	31.8 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Sept after	30.9 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Sept after	27.9 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Sept after	30.0 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Sept after	31.7 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Sept after	30.4 °C	51 %	34 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 21
19 Sept after	30.7 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Sept after	33.0 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Aug 2025

After · 17 Sept 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 1 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1024 µg/m³

Optical depth0.47

WHO 15

272829303112345678910111213

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 190Every 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

6,997 haUlanga13 September 2025 · 7 days · 38 km away

All fires in Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Liwale fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2025 and 10 September 2025: 13 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 6,138 hectares (61.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Liwale (6,184 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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