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Marrupa fire, 14 September 2019 Marrupa, Montepuez

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2019, 23:10 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Marrupa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,049 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 562th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 199 in Mozambique in 2019, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marrupa · 2016Marrupa · 2026Montepuez · 2026Mecula · 2026

Burnt area
3,049ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
14 Sept 2019 – 22 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
92
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
102MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept22 Sept
21 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 2 MW · 2 15 Sept 2019 · 10 MW · 2 16 Sept 2019 · 11 MW · 1 17 Sept 2019 · 205 MW · 24 18 Sept 2019 · 240 MW · 29 19 Sept 2019 · 235 MW · 17 20 Sept 2019 · 102 MW · 15 21 Sept 2019 · 14 MW · 2
14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept

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
34km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,478 ha in 2016, 46 ha in 2017, 87 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Marrupa where it started
    3,021 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Montepuez
    39 ha
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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

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)
17 Sept 33.9 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Sept 33.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Sept 32.4 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Sept 33.4 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept 33.2 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Sept 33.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 32.3 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Sept after 33.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept after 33.6 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept after 28.5 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Sept after 30.9 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Sept after 32.1 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Sept after 34.0 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept after 33.6 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
1 Oct after 34.0 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2019
After · 29 Sept 2019

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 · 92Every 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 Marrupa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2019 to 22 September 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2019 to 21 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,049 hectares (30.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Marrupa (3,021 ha, 0.2 %); Montepuez (39 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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: 21 September 2019 → 22 September 2019.
  2. Start date: 17 September 2019 → 14 September 2019.

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 17 September 2019 to 21 September 2019. 92 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 2020, 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.