How long did the Liwale fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 September 2026 to 19 October 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2026 to 12 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,092 hectares (60.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Liwale (6,144 ha, 0.2 %).

Is the Liwale fire still active?

No fire detections since 20 Oct 2026, 11:08 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · 2026-09-28 → 2026-10-19

Liwale fire, 28 September 2026 Liwale

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2026, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 28 September 2026 in Liwale, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,092 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Lindi since 2016 (of 69 with a page). Number 53 in Tanzania in 2026, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liwale · 2025 Liwale · 2025 Liwale · 2017

Burnt area: 6,092ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 28 Sept 2026 – 19 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 28 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 163; in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 128MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Sept19 Oct

Play back 20 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

28 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct 16 Oct 19 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

32°high

41km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,017 ha in 2017, 1,035 ha in 2020, 892 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,542 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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

6,144 ha reached on 28 Sept

0.2 %

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 area7.5 ha

Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.5 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (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)
28 Sept	29.1 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Sept	29.8 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
30 Sept	29.1 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
1 Oct	28.4 °C	44 %	32 km/h	2.4 mm	Low 9
2 Oct	28.4 °C	45 %	34 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 14
3 Oct	29.7 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Oct	28.0 °C	48 %	41 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 8
5 Oct	29.7 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
6 Oct	30.0 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Oct	28.3 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Oct	32.2 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Oct	30.9 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Oct	31.6 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Oct	29.6 °C	40 %	37 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 19
12 Oct	30.3 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
13 Oct	29.7 °C	36 %	39 km/h	2.1 mm	Moderate 16
14 Oct	29.0 °C	40 %	38 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 15
15 Oct	29.6 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
16 Oct	29.8 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.9 mm	High 25
17 Oct	29.8 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
18 Oct	28.9 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Sept 2026

After · 24 Oct 2026

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 11 October 2026 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

PM1027 µg/m³

Optical depth0.56

WHO 15

26272829301234567891011121314151617

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 · 163Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 September 2026 to 19 October 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2026 to 12 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,092 hectares (60.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Liwale (6,144 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Liwale fire still active?: No fire detections since 20 Oct 2026, 11:08 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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?

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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.

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 2 October 2026 to 12 October 2026. 163 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.

Where it burned