Masvingo fire, August 2024 Masvingo
The fire started on 22 August 2024 in Masvingo, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,224 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 65th largest in Masvingo since 2016 (of 96 with a page). Number 54 in Zimbabwe in 2024, of 88.
- Burnt area
- 1,224ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 22 Aug 2024 – 22 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 27
- in a single hotspot: 96 MW
- Energy released
- 686MW
- sum of detected power
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
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 225 ha in 2018, 439 ha in 2020, 46 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 470 ha that had burned before.
- 439 ha Masvingo fire, September 2020 1,124 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 225 ha Masvingo fire, September 2018 1,152 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 46 ha Masvingo fire, August 2021 1,178 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Masvingo where it started1,228 ha reached on 22 Aug0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 27Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,124 haMasvingoSeptember 2020 · 1 day · 2 km away
- 1,178 haMasvingo24 August 2021 · 5 days · 3 km away
- 1,152 haMasvingo19 September 2018 · 3 days · 3 km away
- 1,482 haMasvingoOctober 2017 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 1,742 haMasvingo17 September 2026 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 1,561 haMasvingo26 August 2021 · 2 days · 8 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Masvingo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 August 2024 and 22 August 2024: 1 day between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,224 hectares (12.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Masvingo (1,228 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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
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
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.