Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Mocubela fire, 2 October 2017 Mocubela

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2017, 10:34 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2017 in Mocubela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,341 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 683th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 151 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocubela · 2024Mocubela · 2026Mocubela · 2026Mocubela · 2026

Burnt area
3,341ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
2 Oct 2017 – 13 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Oct
2017
Heat detections
107
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
95MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct13 Oct
11 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2017 · 11 MW · 2 3 Oct 2017 · 113 MW · 10 4 Oct 2017 · 79 MW · 6 5 Oct 2017 · 22 MW · 2 6 Oct 2017 · 106 MW · 17 7 Oct 2017 · 18 MW · 4 8 Oct 2017 · 181 MW · 29 9 Oct 2017 · 296 MW · 16 10 Oct 2017 · 119 MW · 19 11 Oct 2017 · 8 MW · 2
2 Oct 4 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct

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
52km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 12 Oct.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,106 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Mocubela where it started
    3,359 ha reached on 2 Oct
    0.7 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.62 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.62 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
2 Oct 31.1 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Oct 31.5 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
4 Oct 34.1 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Oct 36.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Oct 36.6 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 36.0 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Oct 37.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct 37.8 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Oct 38.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Oct 38.2 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Oct 27.1 °C 74 % 43 km/h 2.3 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2017
After · 20 Oct 2017

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 · 107Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mocubela fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 October 2017 to 13 October 2017 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2017 to 11 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,341 hectares (33.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mocubela (3,359 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 October 2017 → 13 October 2017.

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.

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 2 October 2017 to 11 October 2017. 107 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 2015, 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.