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Mecula fire, 30 September 2017 Mecula, Marrupa

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2017, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2017 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,153 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 516th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 580 with a page). Number 170 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mecula · 2025Mecula · 2020Marrupa · 2026Mecula · 2025

Burnt area
3,153ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
30 Sept 2017 – 10 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
30 Sept
2017
Heat detections
104
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
83MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept10 Oct
11 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2017 · 1 MW · 1 1 Oct 2017 · 18 MW · 3 2 Oct 2017 · 5 MW · 6 3 Oct 2017 · 196 MW · 13 4 Oct 2017 · 92 MW · 13 5 Oct 2017 · 109 MW · 8 6 Oct 2017 · 232 MW · 27 7 Oct 2017 · 100 MW · 14 8 Oct 2017 · 31 MW · 6 9 Oct 2017 · 64 MW · 6 10 Oct 2017 · 120 MW · 3 11 Oct 2017 · 33 MW · 4
30 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct

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
43km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 920 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Mecula where it started
    3,139 ha reached on 30 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Marrupa
    37 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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
30 Sept 32.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
1 Oct 32.2 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
2 Oct 32.8 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Oct 33.5 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Oct 33.4 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
5 Oct 33.7 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct 32.9 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Oct 33.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Oct 31.7 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
9 Oct 31.3 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
10 Oct 34.4 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Oct after 35.6 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Oct after 35.6 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Oct after 32.9 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
14 Oct after 31.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Oct after 33.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Oct after 34.8 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Oct after 34.9 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Oct after 35.2 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Oct after 34.5 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Oct after 35.5 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2017
After · 17 Oct 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 · 104Every 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 Mecula fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2017 and 10 October 2017: 11 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 3,153 hectares (31.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mecula (3,139 ha, 0.2 %); Marrupa (37 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 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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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. 104 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 2015, 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.