How long did the Pebane fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2024 to 2 October 2024 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2024 to 27 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,040 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pebane (12,103 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2024-09-08 → 2024-10-02

Pebane fire, 8 September 2024 Pebane

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2024, 10:58 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2024 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,040 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 135th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 13 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2021 Pebane · 2016 Pebane · 2017 Pebane · 2026

Burnt area: 12,040ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 8 Sept 2024 – 2 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 644; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 303MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept2 Oct

Play back 2 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 12 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 25 Sept 1 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

37°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 3 Oct.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,118 ha in 2016, 1,960 ha in 2017, 2,029 ha in 2018, 4,926 ha in 2019, 1,226 ha in 2020, 4,698 ha in 2021, 4,573 ha in 2022, 3,899 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,207 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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

Pebane where it started

12,103 ha reached on 8 Sept

1.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area14 ha

Residents≈ 2,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 2,500 residents (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)
8 Sept	32.8 °C	42 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 Sept	35.1 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Sept	31.0 °C	48 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
11 Sept	30.6 °C	49 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Sept	30.9 °C	47 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Sept	32.9 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
14 Sept	34.7 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
15 Sept	36.2 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Sept	35.0 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 Sept	34.2 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Sept	35.0 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Sept	35.7 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Sept	36.1 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Sept	33.4 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 32
22 Sept	29.3 °C	66 %	38 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 7
23 Sept	27.9 °C	59 %	47 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 5
24 Sept	26.9 °C	45 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
25 Sept	30.8 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Sept	33.0 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
27 Sept	36.7 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Sept	35.8 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Sept	36.7 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Sept	37.0 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Oct	37.0 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Oct	32.9 °C	47 %	40 km/h	4.6 mm	Low 8
3 Oct after	26.5 °C	64 %	55 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2024

After · 9 Oct 2024

Before After

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 30 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.60

WHO 15

101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 644Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pebane fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2024 to 2 October 2024 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2024 to 27 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,040 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pebane (12,103 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 27 September 2024 → 2 October 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 12 September 2024 → 8 September 2024.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 12 September 2024 to 27 September 2024. 644 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.

Where it burned