How long did the Mzimba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2017 and 24 November 2017: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,066 hectares (10.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mzimba (1,074 ha, 0.1 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

MW · Malawi · 2017-11-17 → 2017-11-24

Mzimba fire, November 2017 Mzimba

Out · last detection 24 Nov 2017, 11:51 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2017 in Mzimba, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 378th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 420 with a page). Number 55 in Malawi in 2017, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mzimba · 2016 Nkhotakota · 2026 Nkhata Bay · 2023 Nkhata Bay · 2022

Burnt area: 1,066ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 17 Nov 2017 – 24 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 17 Nov; 2017
Heat detections: 103; in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Average daily power: 297MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov24 Nov

Play back 24 Nov 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Nov 20 Nov 21 Nov 22 Nov 23 Nov 24 Nov

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

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 400 ha in 2016.

400 ha Mzimba fire, October 2016 6,937 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

Mzimba where it started

1,074 ha reached on 10 Nov

0.1 %

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.

↔

Before · 10 Nov 2017

After · 1 Dec 2017

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.

Detections table · 103Every 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 Malawi ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mzimba fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2017 and 24 November 2017: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,066 hectares (10.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mzimba (1,074 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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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?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 103 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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