Skip to content
worldfires
en
NA · Namibia · →

Mashare fire, 30 August 2017 Mashare

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2017, 12:46 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2017 in Mashare, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,841 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 4 in Namibia in 2017, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashare · 2016Mashare · 2026Tsumkwe · 2026Mashare · 2026

Burnt area
20,841ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
30 Aug 2017 – 18 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
30 Aug
2017
Heat detections
698
in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
635MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2017 · 74 MW · 12 31 Aug 2017 · 116 MW · 5 1 Sept 2017 · 83 MW · 12 2 Sept 2017 · 86 MW · 10 3 Sept 2017 · 11 MW · 2 4 Sept 2017 · 34 MW · 3 6 Sept 2017 · 61 MW · 3 7 Sept 2017 · 63 MW · 17 8 Sept 2017 · 140 MW · 20 9 Sept 2017 · 158 MW · 12 10 Sept 2017 · 3,054 MW · 114 11 Sept 2017 · 1,015 MW · 81 12 Sept 2017 · 1,070 MW · 102 13 Sept 2017 · 230 MW · 49 14 Sept 2017 · 206 MW · 38 15 Sept 2017 · 4,067 MW · 104 16 Sept 2017 · 785 MW · 45 17 Sept 2017 · 729 MW · 56 18 Sept 2017 · 76 MW · 13
30 Aug 2 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 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

36°high
43km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (208 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. Mashare where it started
    21,015 ha reached on 30 Aug
    2.3 %

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.

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)
30 Aug 32.1 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Aug 32.5 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Sept 33.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Sept 33.0 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Sept 30.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Sept 29.2 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Sept 30.8 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept 32.6 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Sept 33.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Sept 33.8 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
9 Sept 33.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Sept 34.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 33.5 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Sept 33.3 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Sept 33.6 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Sept 34.6 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Sept 34.4 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Sept 35.4 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Sept 35.8 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Sept 36.1 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept after 35.6 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Sept after 35.4 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Sept after 34.3 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Sept after 34.5 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Sept after 35.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Sept after 35.8 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Sept after 36.3 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Sept after 35.3 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept after 33.5 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
28 Sept after 35.2 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2017
After · 25 Sept 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 · 698Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mashare fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2017 to 18 September 2017 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2017 to 18 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,841 hectares (208.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mashare (21,015 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 September 2017 to 18 September 2017. 698 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.

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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.