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TZ · Tanzania · –

Namtumbo fire, 19 September 2025 Namtumbo

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2025, 10:33 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2025 in Namtumbo, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,269 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 14 in Tanzania in 2025, of 138.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
11,269ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
19 Sept 2025 – 12 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
19 Sept
2025
Heat detections
312
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
97MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept12 Oct
12 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 4 20 Sept 2025 · 3 MW · 4 21 Sept 2025 · 2 MW · 2 23 Sept 2025 · 84 MW · 12 24 Sept 2025 · 32 MW · 8 25 Sept 2025 · 10 MW · 4 26 Sept 2025 · 93 MW · 32 27 Sept 2025 · 57 MW · 22 28 Sept 2025 · 388 MW · 40 29 Sept 2025 · 308 MW · 55 30 Sept 2025 · 138 MW · 18 3 Oct 2025 · 38 MW · 24 4 Oct 2025 · 538 MW · 60 5 Oct 2025 · 31 MW · 7 6 Oct 2025 · 45 MW · 6 9 Oct 2025 · 13 MW · 6 10 Oct 2025 · 11 MW · 4 11 Oct 2025 · 4 MW · 2 12 Oct 2025 · 30 MW · 2
19 Sept 24 Sept 28 Sept 4 Oct 10 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

32°high
41km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 144 ha in 2016, 284 ha in 2017, 71 ha in 2018, 2,630 ha in 2019, 4,750 ha in 2021, 1,706 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,401 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (113 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. Namtumbo where it started
    11,354 ha reached on 19 Sept
    0.5 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
19 Sept 31.1 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
20 Sept 30.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Sept 29.9 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Sept 30.1 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
23 Sept 29.8 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
24 Sept 28.4 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Sept 29.1 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Sept 31.2 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept 30.2 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept 28.7 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Sept 31.0 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Sept 30.9 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Oct 29.5 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
2 Oct 28.8 °C 43 % 27 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18
3 Oct 29.9 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
4 Oct 30.8 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Oct 30.4 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct 28.9 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
7 Oct 29.4 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
8 Oct 29.8 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
9 Oct 30.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Oct 30.5 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
11 Oct 31.6 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Oct 29.8 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Oct after 28.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Oct after 28.5 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Oct after 28.8 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct after 30.4 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
17 Oct after 30.1 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Oct after 31.2 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Oct after 30.7 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Oct after 30.6 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
21 Oct after 30.7 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
22 Oct after 30.5 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Sept 2025
After · 19 Oct 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 1 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
19 Sept24 Sept29 Sept4 Oct9 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 312Every 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 Tanzania

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Namtumbo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2025 to 12 October 2025 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2025 to 6 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,269 hectares (112.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Namtumbo (11,354 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 41 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 Tanzania (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings

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: 6 October 2025 → 12 October 2025.
  2. Start date: 21 September 2025 → 19 September 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 21 September 2025 to 6 October 2025. 312 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 2025, 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.