How long did the Lugela fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2026 to 28 September 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2026 to 21 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,329 hectares (123.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lugela (8,567 ha, 1.4 %); Mocuba (3,796 ha, 0.4 %); Ile (29 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2026-09-10 → 2026-09-28

Lugela fire, 10 September 2026 Lugela, Mocuba, Ile

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2026, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2026 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,329 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 129th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 73 in Mozambique in 2026, of 545.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2020 Lugela · 2026 Lugela · 2026

Burnt area: 12,329ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 10 Sept 2026 – 28 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 10 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 404; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 146MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept28 Sept

Play back 29 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 22 Sept 25 Sept 28 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

38°high

53km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.6 mm on 29 Sept.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,050 ha in 2016, 296 ha in 2017, 2,313 ha in 2018, 853 ha in 2019, 3,052 ha in 2020, 716 ha in 2022, 426 ha in 2023, 1,021 ha in 2024, 1,221 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,928 ha that had burned before.

1,457 ha Mocuba fire, September 2020 3,385 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (123 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

Lugela where it started

8,567 ha reached on 10 Sept

1.4 %
Mocuba

3,796 ha reached on 11 Sept

0.4 %
Ile

29 ha reached on 11 Sept

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 2025

Built-up area96 ha

Residents≈ 5,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 96 hectares of built-up land and about 5,100 residents (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)
10 Sept	29.3 °C	50 %	24 km/h	0.7 mm	Low 10
11 Sept	31.3 °C	44 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
12 Sept	32.8 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Sept	31.9 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Sept	32.1 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Sept	34.8 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Sept	33.8 °C	24 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Sept	34.9 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Sept	34.3 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Sept	31.4 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Sept	30.8 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
21 Sept	32.4 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Sept	30.4 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Sept	30.3 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Sept	31.5 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Sept	30.8 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Sept	33.2 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
27 Sept	36.8 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Sept	37.6 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
29 Sept after	33.6 °C	40 %	39 km/h	7.6 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Sept 2026

After · 5 Oct 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 19 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM1056 µg/m³

Optical depth1.04

WHO 15

891011121314151617181920212223242526272829301

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 · 404Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lugela fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2026 to 28 September 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2026 to 21 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,329 hectares (123.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lugela (8,567 ha, 1.4 %); Mocuba (3,796 ha, 0.4 %); Ile (29 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Name: Mocuba → Lugela.

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.

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 12 September 2026 to 21 September 2026. 404 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