Mukwe fire, 30 July 2024 Mukwe
The fire started on 30 July 2024 in Mukwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,103 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 365th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 42 in Namibia in 2024, of 43.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dirico · 2019Dirico · 2021Mukwe · 2016Mukwe · 2021
- Burnt area
- 2,103ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 30 Jul 2024 – 9 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- constituencies
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 78
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 90 ha in 2016, 598 ha in 2017, 814 ha in 2019, 363 ha in 2021, 135 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,211 ha that had burned before.
- 814 ha Dirico fire, August 2019 10,988 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 209 ha Dirico fire, September 2021 12,971 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 90 ha Mukwe fire, August 2016 3,512 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 82 ha Mukwe fire, September 2021 10,615 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 74 ha Mukwe fire, July 2023 2,260 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 72 ha Mukwe fire, August 2021 2,305 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 56 ha Mukwe fire, September 2017 4,853 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
-
Mukwe where it started2,114 ha reached on 30 Jul0.4 %
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.
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 2 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 78Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,971 haDirico3 September 2021 · 11 days · 9 km away
- 10,988 haDirico22 August 2019 · 23 days · 11 km away
- 11,557 haMukweMay 2023 · 22 days · 23 km away
- 13,455 haDirico11 August 2017 · 12 days · 36 km away
- 17,154 haRivungo20 September 2017 · 9 days · 38 km away
- 11,395 haRivungo24 September 2026 · 5 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mukwe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2024 to 9 August 2024 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2024 to 9 August 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,103 hectares (21.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mukwe (2,114 ha, 0.4 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 3 August 2024 to 9 August 2024. 78 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.