Mocuba fire, 25 September 2021 Mocuba
The fire started on 25 September 2021 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,651 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 600th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 155 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,651ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 25 Sept 2021 – 13 Oct 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Sept
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 143
- in a single hotspot: 46 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 113MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 11 Oct.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,087 ha in 2016, 1,653 ha in 2017, 2,406 ha in 2018, 1,283 ha in 2019, 1,015 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,251 ha that had burned before.
- 2,406 ha Mocuba fire, September 2018 116,289 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,136 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 37,409 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,042 ha Mocuba fire, September 2017 44,276 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 785 ha Milange fire, September 2020 41,830 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 22 ha Mocuba fire, September 2020 86,463 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mocuba where it started3,666 ha reached on 25 Sept0.4 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 5.0 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Sept | 34.0 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 29 Sept | 35.6 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Sept | 33.0 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Oct | 32.1 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Oct | 34.4 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Oct | 36.5 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 4 Oct | 33.6 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Oct | 32.3 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Oct | 32.2 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Oct | 28.7 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 8 Oct | 28.9 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Oct | 34.3 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 10 Oct | 36.4 °C | 18 % | 56 km/h | 0.8 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Oct | 26.6 °C | 57 % | 45 km/h | 4.6 mm | Low 6 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 143Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 116,289 haMocuba2 September 2018 · 35 days · 28 km away
- 86,463 haMocuba8 September 2020 · 34 days · 31 km away
- 116,560 haDerre2 September 2016 · 31 days · 32 km away
- 96,637 haLugela 5 October 2026 · 29 days · 33 km away
- 72,800 haDerre4 September 2025 · 44 days · 36 km away
- 99,267 haMilange7 September 2016 · 53 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mocuba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2021 to 13 October 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2021 to 6 October 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,651 hectares (36.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mocuba (3,666 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 6 October 2021 → 13 October 2021.
- Start date: 28 September 2021 → 25 September 2021.
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
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 28 September 2021 to 6 October 2021. 143 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.
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.