Lugela fire, 5 October 2026 Lugela, Milange
The fire started on 5 October 2026 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 94,791 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 14th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 9 in Mozambique in 2026, of 547.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
No detections since 30 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 94,791ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 5 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,933
- in a single hotspot: 126 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 790MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,803 ha in 2016, 23,331 ha in 2017, 11,635 ha in 2018, 21,218 ha in 2019, 9,237 ha in 2020, 8,976 ha in 2021, 23,718 ha in 2022, 14,299 ha in 2023, 14,446 ha in 2024, 29,613 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 36,280 ha that had burned before.
- 16,621 ha Milange fire, September 2016 99,267 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12,587 ha Lugela fire, September 2022 173,378 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,806 ha Lugela fire, October 2017 14,385 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,611 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 37,409 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,163 ha Mocuba fire, September 2017 44,276 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,751 ha Lugela fire, October 2024 6,628 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,195 ha Lugela fire, October 2024 4,500 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,764 ha Mocuba fire, September 2022 32,862 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started92,089 ha reached on 6 Oct15 %
-
3,240 ha reached on 6 Oct0.6 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 100 hectares of built-up land and about 17,000 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Oct | 29.0 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 2.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 6 Oct | 31.1 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 7 Oct | 33.5 °C | 33 % | 23 km/h | 3.2 mm | Very low 2 |
| 8 Oct | 31.9 °C | 38 % | 32 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 6 |
| 9 Oct | 30.4 °C | 42 % | 29 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 6 |
| 10 Oct | 29.3 °C | 41 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 11 Oct | 27.9 °C | 39 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 12 Oct | 30.6 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 13 Oct | 32.2 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 14 Oct | 32.0 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 15 Oct | 31.7 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Oct | 31.6 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 17 Oct | 32.1 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Oct | 31.3 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 19 Oct | 33.7 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 23 |
| 20 Oct | 36.6 °C | 20 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Oct | 36.6 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 22 Oct | 37.9 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Oct | 37.4 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 24 Oct | 30.4 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 25 Oct | 28.8 °C | 48 % | 33 km/h | 3.3 mm | Very low 4 |
| 26 Oct | 32.2 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 27 Oct | 34.6 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Oct | 35.0 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 30 |
| 29 Oct | 28.0 °C | 60 % | 40 km/h | 7.3 mm | Very low 2 |
| 30 Oct | 26.5 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 7 |
| 31 Oct after | 26.8 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 16 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 75 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 1,933Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lugela fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2026 to 30 October 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2026 to 29 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 94,791 hectares (947.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lugela (92,089 ha, 15 %); Milange (3,240 ha, 0.6 %).
- Is the Lugela fire still active?
- No fire detections since 30 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Area: 90,444 → 93,863 ha.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 October 2026 to 29 October 2026. 1,933 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.
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.