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Lugela fire, 14 September 2016 Milange, Lugela

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2016, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2016 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,353 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 454th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 95 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Milange · 2016Mocuba · 2017Lugela · 2024Lugela · 2025

Burnt area
4,353ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
14 Sept 2016 – 2 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2016
Heat detections
236
in a single hotspot: 279 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
212MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept2 Oct
2 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2016 · 8 MW · 2 17 Sept 2016 · 235 MW · 20 18 Sept 2016 · 192 MW · 22 19 Sept 2016 · 4 MW · 3 20 Sept 2016 · 9 MW · 2 21 Sept 2016 · 7 MW · 3 22 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 3 23 Sept 2016 · 2,110 MW · 87 24 Sept 2016 · 533 MW · 35 25 Sept 2016 · 50 MW · 10 26 Sept 2016 · 21 MW · 5 28 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 1 29 Sept 2016 · 13 MW · 8 30 Sept 2016 · 98 MW · 15 1 Oct 2016 · 53 MW · 12 2 Oct 2016 · 46 MW · 8
14 Sept 19 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 29 Sept 2 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

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 3 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% 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. Milange
    3,162 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Lugela where it started
    1,215 ha reached on 14 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 2015
Built-up area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
19 Sept 30.6 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept 27.8 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
21 Sept 30.9 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Sept 32.2 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept 33.9 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 34.6 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Sept 35.8 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Sept 30.9 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Sept 32.9 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Sept 34.6 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Sept 33.8 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Sept 33.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Oct 34.6 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Oct 35.0 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct after 27.8 °C 53 % 49 km/h 4.6 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2016
After · 9 Oct 2016

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 · 236Every 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 Lugela fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2016 to 2 October 2016 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2016 to 26 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,353 hectares (43.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Milange (3,162 ha, 0.6 %); Lugela (1,215 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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: 26 September 2016 → 2 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 19 September 2016 → 14 September 2016.

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 19 September 2016 to 26 September 2016. 236 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 2015, 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.