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Sanga fire, 6 September 2025 Sanga

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2025, 22:11 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2025 in Sanga, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,536 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 589 with a page). Number 21 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sanga · 2023Sanga · 2016Sanga · 2017Sanga · 2026

Burnt area
16,536ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
6 Sept 2025 – 5 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Sept
2025
Heat detections
761
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
234MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept5 Oct
5 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2025 · 402 MW · 44 7 Sept 2025 · 23 MW · 9 8 Sept 2025 · 124 MW · 29 9 Sept 2025 · 99 MW · 9 10 Sept 2025 · 46 MW · 19 11 Sept 2025 · 73 MW · 26 12 Sept 2025 · 159 MW · 35 13 Sept 2025 · 58 MW · 15 14 Sept 2025 · 234 MW · 17 15 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 3 16 Sept 2025 · 1,092 MW · 51 17 Sept 2025 · 220 MW · 42 18 Sept 2025 · 30 MW · 4 19 Sept 2025 · 559 MW · 31 20 Sept 2025 · 56 MW · 6 21 Sept 2025 · 42 MW · 13 22 Sept 2025 · 12 MW · 5 23 Sept 2025 · 91 MW · 14 24 Sept 2025 · 144 MW · 21 25 Sept 2025 · 210 MW · 29 26 Sept 2025 · 478 MW · 48 27 Sept 2025 · 287 MW · 61 28 Sept 2025 · 176 MW · 21 29 Sept 2025 · 363 MW · 50 30 Sept 2025 · 165 MW · 23 2 Oct 2025 · 1 MW · 2 3 Oct 2025 · 214 MW · 33 4 Oct 2025 · 1,104 MW · 78 5 Oct 2025 · 306 MW · 23
6 Sept 11 Sept 16 Sept 21 Sept 26 Sept 2 Oct 4 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

33°high
43km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 661 ha in 2016, 3,678 ha in 2017, 1,578 ha in 2019, 2,492 ha in 2020, 601 ha in 2021, 1,864 ha in 2022, 3,615 ha in 2023, 1,161 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,573 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (165 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
    16,625 ha
    1.3 %

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 area2.5 ha
Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 700 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)
6 Sept 30.4 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 28.9 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 30.3 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 29.7 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
10 Sept 31.4 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Sept 30.1 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 29.8 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept 30.3 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept 30.8 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 29.9 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept 31.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept 31.5 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Sept 30.5 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
19 Sept 31.9 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
20 Sept 29.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
21 Sept 31.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept 30.6 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
23 Sept 30.7 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Sept 29.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Sept 30.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept 30.7 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Sept 31.2 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept 30.1 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Sept 33.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Sept 32.3 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Oct 29.2 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
2 Oct 29.7 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Oct 30.2 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Oct 30.3 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Oct 30.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct after 27.7 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
7 Oct after 30.6 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
8 Oct after 30.0 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
9 Oct after 31.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Oct after 31.0 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
11 Oct after 31.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Oct after 31.4 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Oct after 31.6 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Oct after 29.5 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Oct after 29.6 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2025
After · 12 Oct 2025

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 5 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak67 µg/m³
Days over the guideline22 days
PM1068 µg/m³
Optical depth0.79
45678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012345678
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 · 0Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2025 and 5 October 2025: 30 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 16,536 hectares (165.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sanga (16,625 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 October 2025 → 5 October 2025.
  2. Start date: 31 August 2025 → 6 September 2025.
  3. Last day with fire: 5 October 2025 → 12 October 2025.
  4. Start date: 6 September 2025 → 31 August 2025.

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. No 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.