How long did the Mbarali fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2021 to 26 September 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2021 to 20 September 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,349 hectares (43.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mbarali (4,371 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TZ · Tanzania · 2021-09-08 → 2021-09-26

Mbarali fire, 8 September 2021 Mbarali

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2021, 10:37 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2021 in Mbarali, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,349 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 69th largest in Mbeya since 2016 (of 148 with a page). Number 72 in Tanzania in 2021, of 135.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.5 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…

Suggestions: Iringa · 2017 Iringa · 2019 Chunya · 2020 Mbarali · 2016

Burnt area: 4,349ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 8 Sept 2021 – 26 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 99; in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept26 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 12 Sept 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

31°high

47km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,173 ha in 2016, 1,732 ha in 2017, 1,139 ha in 2018, 1,896 ha in 2019, 1,258 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,715 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

Mbarali where it started

4,371 ha reached on 10 Sept

0.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area0.16 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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	Danger (FWI)
8 Sept	28.9 °C	33 %	31 km/h	High 34
9 Sept	27.6 °C	30 %	36 km/h	High 37
10 Sept	25.7 °C	34 %	47 km/h	High 37
11 Sept	26.2 °C	28 %	44 km/h	High 36
12 Sept	29.1 °C	27 %	34 km/h	High 33
13 Sept	27.6 °C	30 %	33 km/h	High 31
14 Sept	29.5 °C	29 %	31 km/h	High 31
15 Sept	29.5 °C	31 %	30 km/h	High 32
16 Sept	29.1 °C	38 %	31 km/h	High 29
17 Sept	31.2 °C	33 %	23 km/h	High 31
18 Sept	30.0 °C	24 %	42 km/h	Very high 38
19 Sept	29.3 °C	26 %	31 km/h	High 34
20 Sept	28.9 °C	27 %	28 km/h	High 32
21 Sept	29.4 °C	31 %	31 km/h	High 34
22 Sept	29.3 °C	28 %	35 km/h	Very high 39
23 Sept	29.0 °C	25 %	38 km/h	High 38
24 Sept	28.6 °C	24 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
25 Sept	29.4 °C	26 %	38 km/h	High 37
26 Sept	28.8 °C	27 %	37 km/h	High 37
27 Sept after	30.1 °C	26 %	31 km/h	High 34
28 Sept after	30.2 °C	30 %	29 km/h	High 35
29 Sept after	29.7 °C	35 %	33 km/h	High 34
30 Sept after	31.2 °C	26 %	37 km/h	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2021

After · 3 Oct 2021

Before After

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 · 99Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mbarali fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2021 to 26 September 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2021 to 20 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,349 hectares (43.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mbarali (4,371 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 20 September 2021 → 26 September 2021.

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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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 8 September 2021 to 20 September 2021. 99 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.

Where it burned