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Namarrói fire, 5 September 2016 Namarrói, Lugela, Molumbo

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2016, 11:37 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2016 in Namarrói, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 51 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 77,917 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 17th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 3 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lugela · 2026Lugela · 2025Lugela · 2022Lugela · 2020

Burnt area
77,917ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
51days
5 Sept 2016 – 25 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
5 Sept
2016
Heat detections
6,601
in a single hotspot: 280 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept25 Oct
26 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2016 · 56 MW · 9 6 Sept 2016 · 11 MW · 2 7 Sept 2016 · 23 MW · 3 8 Sept 2016 · 166 MW · 17 9 Sept 2016 · 754 MW · 43 10 Sept 2016 · 95 MW · 11 11 Sept 2016 · 250 MW · 21 12 Sept 2016 · 303 MW · 25 13 Sept 2016 · 101 MW · 13 14 Sept 2016 · 294 MW · 24 15 Sept 2016 · 375 MW · 37 16 Sept 2016 · 882 MW · 73 17 Sept 2016 · 1,566 MW · 128 18 Sept 2016 · 2,902 MW · 301 19 Sept 2016 · 251 MW · 27 20 Sept 2016 · 8 MW · 2 21 Sept 2016 · 246 MW · 28 22 Sept 2016 · 590 MW · 54 23 Sept 2016 · 3,402 MW · 279 24 Sept 2016 · 1,015 MW · 167 25 Sept 2016 · 4,023 MW · 322 26 Sept 2016 · 1,724 MW · 192 27 Sept 2016 · 1,110 MW · 108 28 Sept 2016 · 5,229 MW · 413 29 Sept 2016 · 1,040 MW · 157 30 Sept 2016 · 2,888 MW · 262 1 Oct 2016 · 1,506 MW · 167 2 Oct 2016 · 1,342 MW · 138 3 Oct 2016 · 12 MW · 3 5 Oct 2016 · 1,109 MW · 111 6 Oct 2016 · 3,636 MW · 284 7 Oct 2016 · 4,643 MW · 333 8 Oct 2016 · 3,685 MW · 351 9 Oct 2016 · 6,365 MW · 483 10 Oct 2016 · 8,691 MW · 564 11 Oct 2016 · 3,666 MW · 298 12 Oct 2016 · 2,759 MW · 219 13 Oct 2016 · 2,211 MW · 144 14 Oct 2016 · 1,095 MW · 91 15 Oct 2016 · 230 MW · 57 16 Oct 2016 · 487 MW · 55 17 Oct 2016 · 1,450 MW · 134 18 Oct 2016 · 3,272 MW · 248 19 Oct 2016 · 132 MW · 10 20 Oct 2016 · 641 MW · 44 21 Oct 2016 · 329 MW · 32 22 Oct 2016 · 261 MW · 35 23 Oct 2016 · 115 MW · 10 24 Oct 2016 · 117 MW · 31 25 Oct 2016 · 373 MW · 39 26 Oct 2016 · 12 MW · 2
5 Sept 13 Sept 21 Sept 29 Sept 8 Oct 10 Oct 16 Oct 24 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

35°high
45km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 28 Oct.

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 49% of the area of London (779 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
    39,578 ha reached on 5 Sept
    13 %
  2. Lugela
    38,009 ha reached on 5 Sept
    6.2 %
  3. Molumbo
    731 ha reached on 7 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area78 ha
Residents≈ 31,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 78 hectares of built-up land and about 31,000 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)
5 Sept 27.7 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
6 Sept 29.4 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Sept 29.1 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
8 Sept 31.3 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Sept 31.6 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Sept 31.9 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Sept 29.2 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Sept 28.3 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Sept 29.8 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Sept 29.1 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Sept 29.5 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Sept 31.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Sept 32.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 31.3 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Sept 28.7 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
20 Sept 25.7 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 16
21 Sept 29.1 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Sept 30.3 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept 32.0 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 32.5 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Sept 33.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Sept 29.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Sept 31.0 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Sept 32.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Sept 31.6 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Sept 31.8 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Oct 32.7 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Oct 33.2 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 27.0 °C 50 % 45 km/h 8.2 mm Low 6
4 Oct 20.1 °C 70 % 36 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 3
5 Oct 27.1 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
6 Oct 30.2 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Oct 32.2 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Oct 32.7 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Oct 32.5 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Oct 33.7 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Oct 32.6 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Oct 34.3 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 33.4 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Oct 29.9 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Oct 29.4 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Oct 33.7 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Oct 34.5 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Oct 33.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Oct 31.0 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 38
20 Oct 30.9 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
21 Oct 32.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Oct 34.1 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Oct 34.6 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 34.5 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Oct 34.1 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Oct after 33.8 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Oct after 34.3 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Oct after 34.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2016
After · 1 Nov 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 · 6,601Every 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 5 September 2016 to 25 October 2016 (51 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2016 to 18 October 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 77,917 hectares (779.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Namarrói (39,578 ha, 13 %); Lugela (38,009 ha, 6.2 %); Molumbo (731 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % 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: 18 October 2016 → 25 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 11 September 2016 → 5 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; 8 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2016 to 18 October 2016. 6,601 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.