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Namarrói fire, 11 September 2016 Namarrói

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2016, 22:46 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2016 in Namarrói, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,143 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 84th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 10 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namarrói · 2018Namarrói · 2026Lugela · 2026Lugela · 2020

Burnt area
18,143ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
11 Sept 2016 – 9 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Sept
2016
Heat detections
982
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
322MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept9 Oct
10 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 2016 · 56 MW · 7 12 Sept 2016 · 30 MW · 6 13 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 1 14 Sept 2016 · 4 MW · 1 15 Sept 2016 · 13 MW · 2 16 Sept 2016 · 260 MW · 18 17 Sept 2016 · 489 MW · 44 18 Sept 2016 · 210 MW · 40 21 Sept 2016 · 81 MW · 8 22 Sept 2016 · 85 MW · 17 23 Sept 2016 · 1,644 MW · 140 24 Sept 2016 · 443 MW · 57 25 Sept 2016 · 814 MW · 92 26 Sept 2016 · 463 MW · 51 27 Sept 2016 · 112 MW · 16 28 Sept 2016 · 1,254 MW · 137 29 Sept 2016 · 396 MW · 76 30 Sept 2016 · 525 MW · 60 1 Oct 2016 · 145 MW · 34 2 Oct 2016 · 118 MW · 20 3 Oct 2016 · 5 MW · 1 5 Oct 2016 · 47 MW · 9 6 Oct 2016 · 251 MW · 30 7 Oct 2016 · 144 MW · 21 8 Oct 2016 · 385 MW · 26 9 Oct 2016 · 577 MW · 56 10 Oct 2016 · 130 MW · 12
11 Sept 15 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 29 Sept 3 Oct 8 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

34°high
45km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 11% of the area of London (181 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. Namarrói where it started
    18,248 ha reached on 11 Sept
    5.9 %

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 area39 ha
Residents≈ 5,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 39 hectares of built-up land and about 5,400 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)
11 Sept 29.8 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Sept 28.7 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Sept 30.5 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Sept 29.5 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept 30.0 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Sept 31.9 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Sept 32.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Sept 31.6 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 28.9 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept 26.4 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
21 Sept 29.5 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Sept 30.7 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept 32.3 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 32.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Sept 34.0 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept 29.8 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Sept 31.3 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Sept 32.9 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept 31.6 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Sept 32.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct 33.1 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Oct 33.2 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 28.0 °C 49 % 45 km/h 11.9 mm Low 6
4 Oct 20.2 °C 72 % 38 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 3
5 Oct 27.5 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
6 Oct 30.8 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Oct 32.6 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Oct 33.1 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Oct 32.7 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Oct after 33.9 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Oct after 33.1 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Oct after 34.4 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Oct after 33.7 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Oct after 30.6 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Oct after 29.3 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
16 Oct after 33.7 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Oct after 34.6 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Oct after 33.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Oct after 31.9 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2016
After · 16 Oct 2016

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 · 982Every 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 Namarrói fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2016 to 9 October 2016 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2016 to 2 October 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,143 hectares (181.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Namarrói (18,248 ha, 5.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 2 October 2016 → 9 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 16 September 2016 → 11 September 2016.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 September 2016 to 2 October 2016. 982 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.