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Mlele fire, 14 July 2021 Mlele

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2021, 23:28 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2021 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 262th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 129 in Tanzania in 2021, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2016Mlele · 2017Mlele · 2020Mlele · 2019

Burnt area
3,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
14 Jul 2021 – 23 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Jul
2021
Heat detections
97
in a single hotspot: 123 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
73MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2021 · 248 MW · 8 15 Jul 2021 · 111 MW · 17 16 Jul 2021 · 34 MW · 5 17 Jul 2021 · 16 MW · 3 18 Jul 2021 · 21 MW · 4 19 Jul 2021 · 52 MW · 11 20 Jul 2021 · 73 MW · 10 21 Jul 2021 · 28 MW · 9 22 Jul 2021 · 56 MW · 11 23 Jul 2021 · 94 MW · 14
14 Jul 16 Jul 18 Jul 20 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

32°high
42km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,704 ha in 2016, 533 ha in 2017, 121 ha in 2018, 595 ha in 2019, 2,519 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,031 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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
    3,069 ha reached on 14 Jul
    0.1 %

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 area0.15 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
14 Jul 30.0 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul 29.7 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul 29.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Jul 28.8 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jul 28.8 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Jul 29.9 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 30.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 32.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Jul 30.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jul 30.1 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jul after 29.4 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Jul after 25.7 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul after 26.4 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jul after 28.2 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jul after 30.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jul after 30.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul after 29.8 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul after 29.2 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 29.7 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug after 30.4 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2021
After · 30 Jul 2021

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 · 97Every 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 14 July 2021 and 23 July 2021: 10 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 3,048 hectares (30.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mlele (3,069 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 42 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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. 97 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.