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Namuno fire, September 2017 Namuno, Montepuez

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2017, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2017 in Namuno, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,349 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in Cabo Delgado since 2016 (of 120 with a page). Number 149 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namuno · 2026Balama · 2016Namuno · 2022Balama · 2026

Burnt area
3,349ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
4 Sept 2017 – 8 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
4 Sept
2017
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
241MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept8 Sept
9 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2017 · 255 MW · 20 5 Sept 2017 · 941 MW · 59 6 Sept 2017 · 52 MW · 11 7 Sept 2017 · 55 MW · 4 8 Sept 2017 · 121 MW · 14 9 Sept 2017 · 24 MW · 4
4 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
44km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,011 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Namuno where it started
    2,846 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.5 %
  2. Montepuez
    521 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area13 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 13 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 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)
4 Sept 27.7 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Sept 28.4 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 28.7 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 29.4 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 30.7 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept after 28.4 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept after 27.9 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept after 30.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Sept after 30.6 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept after 31.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept after 31.3 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept after 30.3 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept after 31.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept after 31.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 31.5 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2017
After · 15 Sept 2017

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 · 144Every 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 Namuno fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2017 and 8 September 2017: 5 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 3,349 hectares (33.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Namuno (2,846 ha, 0.5 %); Montepuez (521 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 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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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. 144 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.