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Sanga fire, 24 October 2019 Sanga, Mavago

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2019, 10:54 UTC

The fire started on 24 October 2019 in Sanga, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,245 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 106th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 587 with a page). Number 30 in Mozambique in 2019, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavago · 2018Sanga · 2017Sanga · 2021Sanga · 2025

Burnt area
7,245ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
24 Oct 2019 – 1 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
24 Oct
2019
Heat detections
231
in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
279MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2019

How it evolved, day by day

24 Oct 2019 · 208 MW · 31 25 Oct 2019 · 101 MW · 8 26 Oct 2019 · 197 MW · 20 27 Oct 2019 · 275 MW · 29 28 Oct 2019 · 267 MW · 34 29 Oct 2019 · 253 MW · 37 30 Oct 2019 · 874 MW · 46 31 Oct 2019 · 326 MW · 24 1 Nov 2019 · 13 MW · 2
24 Oct 26 Oct 28 Oct 30 Oct 1 Nov

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
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 4 Nov.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 115 ha in 2016, 1,140 ha in 2017, 2,149 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (72 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. Sanga where it started
    4,979 ha reached on 24 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Mavago
    2,306 ha reached on 24 Oct
    0.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
24 Oct 35.4 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Oct 34.1 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Oct 35.1 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Oct 35.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Oct 36.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Oct 36.4 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Oct 35.6 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Oct 36.1 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Nov 34.2 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
2 Nov after 33.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Nov after 33.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
4 Nov after 34.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 1.3 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Oct 2019
After · 8 Nov 2019

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 · 231Every 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 Sanga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 October 2019 to 1 November 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 October 2019 to 31 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,245 hectares (72.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sanga (4,979 ha, 0.4 %); Mavago (2,306 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 31 October 2019 → 1 November 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 October 2019 to 31 October 2019. 231 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.