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Pebane fire, 14 September 2016 Pebane

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2016, 11:18 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2016 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,804 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 218th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 33 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2025Pebane · 2026Pebane · 2026Pebane · 2016

Burnt area
7,804ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
14 Sept 2016 – 24 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2016
Heat detections
394
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
318MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept24 Sept
25 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2016 · 39 MW · 5 15 Sept 2016 · 231 MW · 20 16 Sept 2016 · 279 MW · 22 17 Sept 2016 · 328 MW · 23 18 Sept 2016 · 381 MW · 39 19 Sept 2016 · 302 MW · 24 20 Sept 2016 · 36 MW · 3 21 Sept 2016 · 16 MW · 4 22 Sept 2016 · 857 MW · 50 23 Sept 2016 · 1,059 MW · 89 24 Sept 2016 · 80 MW · 18 25 Sept 2016 · 205 MW · 22
14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 24 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

36°high
47km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 3 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 4.9% of the area of London (78 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. Pebane where it started
    7,853 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.8 %

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 area2.8 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 650 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)
14 Sept 30.2 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Sept 31.9 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Sept 34.5 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Sept 35.6 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 33.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 31.2 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
20 Sept 30.0 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Sept 31.6 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Sept 35.0 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Sept 36.2 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 35.2 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Sept after 34.3 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Sept after 31.2 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept after 32.9 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept after 36.1 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Sept after 35.7 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept after 33.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Oct after 35.8 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct after 36.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct after 33.8 °C 38 % 38 km/h 4.2 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2016
After · 1 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 · 394Every 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 Pebane fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2016 and 24 September 2016: 11 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 7,804 hectares (78.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pebane (7,853 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 394 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.