How long did the Lugela fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 October 2017 to 28 October 2017 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2017 to 21 October 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,882 hectares (148.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lugela (14,809 ha, 2.4 %); Namarrói (134 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.

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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2017-10-04 → 2017-10-28

Lugela fire, 4 October 2017 Lugela, Namarrói

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2017, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2017 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,882 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 104th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 841 with a page). Number 9 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namarrói · 2016 Lugela · 2025 Lugela · 2026 Lugela · 2022

Burnt area: 14,882ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 4 Oct 2017 – 28 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 4 Oct; 2017
Heat detections: 647; in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 294MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct28 Oct

Play back 28 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

4 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 25 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

38°high

49km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.0 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,727 ha in 2016.

8,956 ha Namarrói fire, September 2016 77,917 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.4% of the area of London (149 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

Lugela where it started

14,809 ha reached on 4 Oct

2.4 %
Namarrói

134 ha reached on 13 Oct

0.0 %

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 area11 ha

Residents≈ 8,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 8,400 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)
4 Oct	32.1 °C	35 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Oct	34.7 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Oct	34.6 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Oct	34.5 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Oct	33.1 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Oct	34.0 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Oct	34.6 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
11 Oct	35.1 °C	33 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	High 32
12 Oct	28.9 °C	60 %	36 km/h	2.6 mm	Low 8
13 Oct	29.5 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Oct	25.6 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Oct	30.3 °C	30 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Oct	35.9 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Oct	37.2 °C	17 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
18 Oct	36.7 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
19 Oct	34.5 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Oct	37.7 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Oct	34.4 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
22 Oct	31.5 °C	53 %	41 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 11
23 Oct	32.3 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Oct	34.5 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Oct	35.6 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Oct	36.8 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
27 Oct	37.8 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Oct	32.7 °C	44 %	37 km/h	8.4 mm	Low 7
29 Oct after	23.5 °C	74 %	48 km/h	10.0 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Sept 2017

After · 4 Nov 2017

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.

Detections table · 647Every 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 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 4 October 2017 to 28 October 2017 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2017 to 21 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,882 hectares (148.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lugela (14,809 ha, 2.4 %); Namarrói (134 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 21 October 2017 → 28 October 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 6 October 2017 → 4 October 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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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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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 October 2017 to 21 October 2017. 647 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.

Where it burned