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Mlele fire, 14 August 2021 Mlele

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2021, 23:47 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2021 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,112 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 155th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 80 in Tanzania in 2021, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2017Mlele · 2016Mlele · 2020Mlele · 2025

Burnt area
4,112ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
14 Aug 2021 – 23 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Aug
2021
Heat detections
111
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
76MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug23 Aug
23 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2021 · 104 MW · 7 15 Aug 2021 · 14 MW · 5 16 Aug 2021 · 55 MW · 11 17 Aug 2021 · 283 MW · 44 18 Aug 2021 · 165 MW · 17 19 Aug 2021 · 5 MW · 4 20 Aug 2021 · 16 MW · 5 21 Aug 2021 · 50 MW · 5 22 Aug 2021 · 28 MW · 6 23 Aug 2021 · 37 MW · 5
14 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
34km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,126 ha in 2016, 1,216 ha in 2017, 969 ha in 2018, 22 ha in 2019, 42 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,290 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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
    4,145 ha reached on 14 Aug
    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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 Aug 27.8 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Aug 27.3 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Aug 27.9 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Aug 27.9 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Aug 28.0 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Aug 28.3 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Aug 29.3 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Aug 28.3 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug 30.1 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Aug 30.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Aug after 29.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Aug after 29.5 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Aug after 29.8 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Aug after 30.2 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Aug after 30.4 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug after 31.2 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Aug after 29.6 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Aug after 29.7 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Sept after 29.6 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Sept after 29.1 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2021
After · 30 Aug 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 · 111Every 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 August 2021 and 23 August 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 4,112 hectares (41.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mlele (4,145 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 34 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
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. 111 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.