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Ribaué fire, 14 September 2018 Ribaué, Gilé

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2018, 22:02 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2018 in Ribaué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,275 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 36th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 20 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribaué · 2017Ribaué · 2016Ribaué · 2026Gilé · 2022

Burnt area
12,275ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
14 Sept 2018 – 26 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2018
Heat detections
556
in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
435MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept26 Sept
27 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2018 · 50 MW · 10 15 Sept 2018 · 413 MW · 39 16 Sept 2018 · 783 MW · 57 17 Sept 2018 · 2,356 MW · 163 18 Sept 2018 · 1,328 MW · 101 19 Sept 2018 · 78 MW · 14 20 Sept 2018 · 330 MW · 40 21 Sept 2018 · 340 MW · 29 22 Sept 2018 · 137 MW · 18 23 Sept 2018 · 5 MW · 2 24 Sept 2018 · 38 MW · 3 25 Sept 2018 · 117 MW · 15 26 Sept 2018 · 66 MW · 6 27 Sept 2018 · 53 MW · 7
14 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 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

34°high
55km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,237 ha in 2016, 7,700 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,164 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (123 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. Ribaué where it started
    12,226 ha reached on 7 Sept
    2.0 %
  2. Gilé
    134 ha reached on 17 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 2020
Built-up area7.4 ha
Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.4 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
7 Sept 29.2 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept 29.3 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 30.5 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Sept 23.3 °C 70 % 35 km/h 1.8 mm Low 7
11 Sept 24.2 °C 54 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
12 Sept 29.3 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
13 Sept 30.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Sept 31.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Sept 32.3 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Sept 32.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Sept 31.9 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 32.2 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept 31.7 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept 32.5 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Sept 32.0 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Sept 30.1 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Sept 31.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Sept 31.1 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Sept 32.6 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Sept 33.5 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Sept after 32.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept after 32.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept after 32.1 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Sept after 27.9 °C 44 % 55 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 17
1 Oct after 27.6 °C 51 % 48 km/h 2.3 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2018
After · 3 Oct 2018

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 · 556Every 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 Ribaué fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2018 and 26 September 2018: 13 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 12,275 hectares (122.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ribaué (12,226 ha, 2.0 %); Gilé (134 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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. 556 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 2020, 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.