How long did the Milange fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2020 to 4 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,794 hectares (67.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Milange (5,094 ha, 0.9 %); Morrumbala (1,743 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2020-09-14 → 2020-10-04

Milange fire, 14 September 2020 Milange, Morrumbala

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2020, 11:55 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2020 in Milange, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,794 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 249th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). Number 49 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Milange · 2019 Morrumbala · 2018 Morrumbala · 2017 Morrumbala · 2016

Burnt area: 6,794ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 14 Sept 2020 – 4 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 14 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 406; in a single hotspot: 149 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 161MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept4 Oct

Play back 4 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 17 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 3 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

38°high

49km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,324 ha in 2016, 3,465 ha in 2017, 5,216 ha in 2018, 5,646 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,774 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

Milange where it started

5,094 ha reached on 14 Sept

0.9 %
Morrumbala

1,743 ha reached on 15 Sept

0.2 %

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 area3.5 ha

Residents≈ 1,300

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.5 hectares of built-up land and about 1,300 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
17 Sept	35.6 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
18 Sept	33.1 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Sept	33.2 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Sept	33.9 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Sept	35.1 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Sept	30.5 °C	37 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Sept	27.4 °C	45 %	43 km/h	2.8 mm	Low 9
24 Sept	30.4 °C	36 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
25 Sept	33.4 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
26 Sept	37.3 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Sept	37.8 °C	20 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Sept	37.1 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Sept	36.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Sept	34.1 °C	34 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Oct	35.9 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Oct	37.8 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Oct	36.4 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
4 Oct	36.9 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Oct after	33.1 °C	42 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 Oct after	28.7 °C	47 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Oct after	31.3 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Oct after	30.8 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Oct after	33.4 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Oct after	38.2 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Sept 2020

After · 11 Oct 2020

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 · 406Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Milange fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2020 to 4 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,794 hectares (67.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Milange (5,094 ha, 0.9 %); Morrumbala (1,743 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 30 September 2020 → 4 October 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 17 September 2020 → 14 September 2020.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2020 to 30 September 2020. 406 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