Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Muanza fire, 18 October 2019 Muanza

Out · last detection 11 Nov 2019, 11:05 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2019 in Muanza, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 63th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 45 in Mozambique in 2019, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muanza · 2019

Burnt area
6,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
18 Oct 2019 – 11 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Oct
2019
Heat detections
240
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
202MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct11 Nov
11 Nov 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 2019 · 4 MW · 1 21 Oct 2019 · 17 MW · 2 24 Oct 2019 · 5 MW · 1 25 Oct 2019 · 98 MW · 10 26 Oct 2019 · 6 MW · 1 27 Oct 2019 · 1 MW · 1 28 Oct 2019 · 3,324 MW · 126 29 Oct 2019 · 50 MW · 5 30 Oct 2019 · 21 MW · 3 31 Oct 2019 · 6 MW · 1 1 Nov 2019 · 38 MW · 8 2 Nov 2019 · 159 MW · 20 3 Nov 2019 · 53 MW · 10 4 Nov 2019 · 51 MW · 8 5 Nov 2019 · 28 MW · 6 6 Nov 2019 · 102 MW · 23 7 Nov 2019 · 24 MW · 6 8 Nov 2019 · 5 MW · 1 10 Nov 2019 · 15 MW · 3 11 Nov 2019 · 31 MW · 4
18 Oct 25 Oct 28 Oct 31 Oct 3 Nov 6 Nov 10 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
48km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.9 mm on 15 Nov.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Muanza where it started
    6,082 ha reached on 18 Oct
    0.8 %

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 area0.19 ha
Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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)
18 Oct 27.9 °C 64 % 32 km/h 5.9 mm Very low 1
19 Oct 29.2 °C 68 % 39 km/h 5.3 mm Very low 1
20 Oct 29.7 °C 74 % 35 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 1
21 Oct 33.9 °C 52 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
22 Oct 34.5 °C 54 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
23 Oct 33.8 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
24 Oct 39.4 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Oct 39.5 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Oct 38.2 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Oct 38.3 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Oct 41.8 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Oct 40.6 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Oct 32.8 °C 54 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Oct 31.7 °C 56 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Nov 30.0 °C 54 % 48 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 17
2 Nov 30.2 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
3 Nov 33.0 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Nov 32.7 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Nov 30.3 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Nov 31.7 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Nov 34.9 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
8 Nov 37.9 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm High 28
9 Nov 31.3 °C 68 % 44 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 5
10 Nov 30.8 °C 60 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
11 Nov 32.9 °C 50 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
12 Nov after 31.6 °C 54 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Nov after 32.9 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
14 Nov after 35.2 °C 50 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
15 Nov after 33.3 °C 58 % 33 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Oct 2019
After · 18 Nov 2019

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 · 240Every 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 Muanza fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2019 to 11 November 2019 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 October 2019 to 10 November 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,048 hectares (60.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Muanza (6,082 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 November 2019 → 11 November 2019.
  2. Start date: 25 October 2019 → 18 October 2019.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 October 2019 to 10 November 2019. 240 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.