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Mlele fire, 28 June 2016 Mlele, Songwe

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2016, 11:21 UTC

The fire started on 28 June 2016 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,561 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 4 in Tanzania in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2017Mlele · 2025Mlele · 2022Mlele · 2017

Burnt area
34,561ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
28 Jun 2016 – 22 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
28 Jun
2016
Heat detections
985
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
21
High · FWI index
Average daily power
264MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jun22 Jul
23 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jun 2016 · 38 MW · 15 29 Jun 2016 · 1,306 MW · 76 30 Jun 2016 · 210 MW · 46 1 Jul 2016 · 231 MW · 31 2 Jul 2016 · 79 MW · 19 3 Jul 2016 · 113 MW · 23 4 Jul 2016 · 147 MW · 44 5 Jul 2016 · 111 MW · 37 6 Jul 2016 · 210 MW · 25 7 Jul 2016 · 216 MW · 36 8 Jul 2016 · 258 MW · 46 9 Jul 2016 · 212 MW · 44 10 Jul 2016 · 207 MW · 48 11 Jul 2016 · 622 MW · 113 12 Jul 2016 · 1,103 MW · 159 13 Jul 2016 · 353 MW · 55 14 Jul 2016 · 86 MW · 27 15 Jul 2016 · 525 MW · 41 16 Jul 2016 · 178 MW · 12 17 Jul 2016 · 60 MW · 11 18 Jul 2016 · 36 MW · 9 19 Jul 2016 · 92 MW · 13 20 Jul 2016 · 47 MW · 9 21 Jul 2016 · 27 MW · 10 22 Jul 2016 · 227 MW · 23 23 Jul 2016 · 173 MW · 13
28 Jun 29 Jun 2 Jul 6 Jul 10 Jul 14 Jul 18 Jul 22 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
43km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity

It had gone 55 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 22% of the area of London (346 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. Mlele where it started
    34,616 ha reached on 28 Jun
    1.2 %
  2. Songwe
    114 ha reached on 13 Jul
    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)
28 Jun 23.6 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
29 Jun 23.3 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
30 Jun 23.7 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Jul 24.3 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
2 Jul 25.3 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Jul 23.4 °C 46 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Jul 22.0 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Jul 22.2 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Jul 23.5 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Jul 23.6 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Jul 23.0 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Jul 22.4 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jul 22.2 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Jul 21.7 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Jul 22.2 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Jul 22.2 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Jul 22.6 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Jul 23.0 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Jul 24.0 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Jul 22.6 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Jul 22.9 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Jul 24.0 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul 23.4 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Jul 23.8 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jul 24.1 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Jul after 24.7 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Jul after 24.1 °C 52 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
25 Jul after 24.6 °C 47 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Jul after 24.9 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Jul after 24.4 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Jul after 25.6 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Jul after 25.3 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jul after 23.9 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Jul after 25.5 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug after 25.4 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jun 2016
After · 29 Jul 2016

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 · 985Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mlele fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 June 2016 and 22 July 2016: 25 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 34,561 hectares (345.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mlele (34,616 ha, 1.2 %); Songwe (114 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.3 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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

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.

Report an error
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 985 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.