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Lugela fire, 7 September 2017 Lugela, Molumbo, Namarrói

Out · last detection 6 Oct 2017, 10:28 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2017 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 40,697 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 35th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). Number 4 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namarrói · 2016Lugela · 2022Lugela · 2020Lugela · 2026

Burnt area
40,697ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
7 Sept 2017 – 5 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
7 Sept
2017
Heat detections
2,542
in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept5 Oct
6 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2017 · 105 MW · 13 8 Sept 2017 · 395 MW · 30 9 Sept 2017 · 30 MW · 7 10 Sept 2017 · 245 MW · 18 11 Sept 2017 · 472 MW · 51 12 Sept 2017 · 1,414 MW · 100 13 Sept 2017 · 1,333 MW · 100 14 Sept 2017 · 548 MW · 44 15 Sept 2017 · 2,751 MW · 224 16 Sept 2017 · 979 MW · 96 17 Sept 2017 · 5,920 MW · 416 18 Sept 2017 · 2,531 MW · 194 19 Sept 2017 · 104 MW · 18 20 Sept 2017 · 367 MW · 36 21 Sept 2017 · 89 MW · 15 22 Sept 2017 · 716 MW · 65 23 Sept 2017 · 1,685 MW · 113 24 Sept 2017 · 402 MW · 60 25 Sept 2017 · 439 MW · 82 26 Sept 2017 · 4,375 MW · 382 27 Sept 2017 · 1,340 MW · 144 28 Sept 2017 · 2,038 MW · 140 29 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 5 30 Sept 2017 · 106 MW · 20 1 Oct 2017 · 220 MW · 26 2 Oct 2017 · 45 MW · 8 3 Oct 2017 · 488 MW · 34 4 Oct 2017 · 122 MW · 16 5 Oct 2017 · 125 MW · 17 6 Oct 2017 · 1,242 MW · 68
7 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 22 Sept 27 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

34°high
48km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 12 Oct.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25,131 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,621 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 26% of the area of London (407 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. Lugela where it started
    20,564 ha reached on 7 Sept
    3.3 %
  2. Molumbo
    14,423 ha reached on 7 Sept
    3.3 %
  3. Namarrói
    5,917 ha reached on 8 Sept
    1.9 %

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 area44 ha
Residents≈ 20,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 44 hectares of built-up land and about 20,000 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)
7 Sept 29.1 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Sept 30.8 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Sept 30.1 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Sept 29.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 29.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Sept 30.0 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 31.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept 31.8 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept 30.3 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept 30.2 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Sept 33.2 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept 31.2 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Sept 29.7 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept 31.8 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 28.6 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Sept 29.5 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Sept 32.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept 26.9 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Sept 29.9 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept 33.7 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept 34.2 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Sept 32.3 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
29 Sept 27.7 °C 52 % 45 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
30 Sept 28.6 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Oct 28.0 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
2 Oct 29.4 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
3 Oct 31.4 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Oct 31.8 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Oct 34.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct after 34.1 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Oct after 34.1 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Oct after 32.2 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct after 33.1 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct after 33.6 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Oct after 35.2 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.8 mm High 38
12 Oct after 28.9 °C 57 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2017
After · 12 Oct 2017

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 · 2,542Every 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 7 September 2017 to 5 October 2017 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2017 to 28 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 40,697 hectares (407.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lugela (20,564 ha, 3.3 %); Molumbo (14,423 ha, 3.3 %); Namarrói (5,917 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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: 28 September 2017 → 5 October 2017.
  2. Start date: 11 September 2017 → 7 September 2017.

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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2017 to 28 September 2017. 2,542 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.