Makonde fire, 20 September 2022 Makonde
The fire started on 20 September 2022 in Makonde, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,156 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 604th largest in Mashonaland West since 2016 (of 826 with a page). Number 278 in Zimbabwe in 2022, of 346.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,156ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 20 Sept 2022 – 25 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Average daily power
- 19MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 500 ha in 2016, 525 ha in 2018, 60 ha in 2019, 138 ha in 2020, 12 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 899 ha that had burned before.
- 525 ha Makonde fire, August 2018 1,243 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 499 ha Makonde fire, September 2016 2,983 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 138 ha Makonde fire, October 2020 1,284 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 60 ha Makonde fire, September 2019 1,808 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12 ha Makonde fire, September 2021 1,317 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Makonde fire, September 2016 1,336 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
-
Makonde where it started1,158 ha reached on 22 Sept0.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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
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 23 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 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 · 23Every 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 Makonde fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2022 to 25 September 2022 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2022 to 24 September 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,156 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Makonde (1,158 ha, 0.1 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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.
- Last day with fire: 24 September 2022 → 25 September 2022.
- Start date: 21 September 2022 → 20 September 2022.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 September 2022 to 24 September 2022. 23 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.