How long did the Mlele fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2026 to 10 September 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 August 2026 to 3 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,035 hectares (100.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mlele (10,096 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2026-08-21 → 2026-09-10

Mlele fire, 21 August 2026 Mlele

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2026, 11:40 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2026 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,035 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 20 in Tanzania in 2026, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2025 Mlele · 2023 Mlele · 2016 Mlele · 2026

Burnt area: 10,035ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 21 Aug 2026 – 10 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 21 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 217; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 166MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug10 Sept

Play back 10 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 26 Aug 29 Aug 1 Sept 6 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

46km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17 ha in 2017, 136 ha in 2018, 348 ha in 2019, 774 ha in 2020, 1,246 ha in 2022, 1,730 ha in 2023, 2,104 ha in 2024, 821 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,597 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (100 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

Mlele where it started

10,096 ha reached on 21 Aug

0.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
21 Aug	31.1 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Aug	30.9 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Aug	30.1 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 38
24 Aug	32.4 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
25 Aug	31.7 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug	33.3 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Aug	31.9 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Aug	31.2 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Aug	31.0 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Aug	31.5 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
31 Aug	31.8 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
1 Sept	32.0 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
2 Sept	32.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Sept	33.6 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
4 Sept	33.6 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Sept	35.8 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Sept	33.9 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
7 Sept	32.7 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
8 Sept	31.3 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Sept	30.5 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Sept	31.2 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Sept after	31.4 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
12 Sept after	32.1 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Sept after	32.5 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Sept after	32.8 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Sept after	32.8 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Sept after	31.2 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Sept after	31.0 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Sept after	32.1 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
19 Sept after	32.0 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
20 Sept after	33.6 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Aug 2026

After · 17 Sept 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 23 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak40 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM1044 µg/m³

Optical depth0.88

WHO 15

1920212223242526272829303112345678910111213

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 217Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mlele fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2026 to 10 September 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 August 2026 to 3 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,035 hectares (100.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mlele (10,096 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 August 2026 to 3 September 2026. 217 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 2025, 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