How long did the Meatu fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 June 2016 and 30 June 2016: 7 days 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 7,455 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Meatu (7,502 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 2016-06-24 → 2016-06-30

Meatu fire, June 2016 Meatu

Out · last detection 30 Jun 2016, 22:56 UTC

The fire started on 24 June 2016 in Meatu, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,455 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Simiyu since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 32 in Tanzania in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Meatu · 2025 Meatu · 2025 Meatu · 2020 Meatu · 2021

Burnt area: 7,455ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 24 Jun 2016 – 30 Jun 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 24 Jun; 2016
Heat detections: 230; in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 215MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jun30 Jun

Play back 30 Jun 2016

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jun 25 Jun 26 Jun 27 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 30 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

28°high

47km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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

Meatu where it started

7,502 ha reached on 24 Jun

0.8 %

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	Danger (FWI)
24 Jun	26.0 °C	36 %	43 km/h	High 34
25 Jun	26.6 °C	34 %	43 km/h	High 34
26 Jun	26.9 °C	34 %	47 km/h	High 36
27 Jun	27.4 °C	26 %	40 km/h	High 37
28 Jun	27.5 °C	28 %	32 km/h	High 33
29 Jun	28.0 °C	28 %	34 km/h	High 36
30 Jun	27.5 °C	31 %	30 km/h	High 34
1 Jul after	28.5 °C	31 %	28 km/h	High 34
2 Jul after	29.2 °C	31 %	25 km/h	High 33
3 Jul after	29.3 °C	27 %	39 km/h	Very high 39
4 Jul after	27.4 °C	34 %	36 km/h	High 36
5 Jul after	27.5 °C	31 %	34 km/h	High 36
6 Jul after	28.6 °C	29 %	28 km/h	High 33
7 Jul after	29.2 °C	30 %	28 km/h	High 34
8 Jul after	27.4 °C	33 %	32 km/h	High 36
9 Jul after	27.5 °C	33 %	38 km/h	Very high 39
10 Jul after	27.7 °C	32 %	37 km/h	Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Jun 2016

After · 7 Jul 2016

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 · 230Every 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 Meatu fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 June 2016 and 30 June 2016: 7 days 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 7,455 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Meatu (7,502 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 230 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 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