Burned area
satellite only4,163ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
MZ · Mozambique · –
Sanga fire, 16 October 2026 Sanga
Out · last detection 25 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC
The fire started on 16 October 2026 in Sanga, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,163 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 303 in Mozambique in 2026, of 554.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
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Suggestions: Sanga · 2022Sanga · 2025Sanga · 2026Sanga · 2025
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Fire page data · version 2026-10-28matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only10days
16 Oct 2026 to 25 Oct 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 25 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only16 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 16 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only79
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 89 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only209MW
Total radiative power on 22 October 2026; hotspots that day: 24.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 22 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model42.6FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 10.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model37.0°C · 17% RH
High of 37.0 °C and minimum humidity of 17% on 22 October 2026; gusts of 41 km/h on 24 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 16 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logLast day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 25 October 2026.
-
logArea: 3,385 → 4,100 ha.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/sanga-2026-10-7?v=2026-10-28A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire sanga-2026-10-7.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-16 | 0 | 0 | 31.3 | 19.6 | 27 | 17.1 | 39.6 | 0.2 | 42.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-17 | 8 | 73 | 31.6 | 18.8 | 28 | 17.9 | 36.4 | 0.5 | 37 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-18 | 0 | 0 | 29.8 | 18.6 | 31 | 16.6 | 36.7 | 0 | 35.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-19 | 4 | 33 | 32.3 | 19.6 | 31 | 14.3 | 35.6 | 0 | 32.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-20 | 4 | 27 | 35 | 20 | 27 | 13.3 | 33.1 | 0 | 34.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-21 | 5 | 30 | 34.8 | 21.3 | 27 | 12.6 | 30.2 | 0 | 38.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-22 | 24 | 209 | 37 | 21.3 | 17 | 15.5 | 33.5 | 0 | 47.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-23 | 22 | 126 | 36.9 | 21.6 | 16 | 13.6 | 34.6 | 0 | 48.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-24 | 11 | 160 | 34.7 | 21.7 | 22 | 16.4 | 41.4 | 0 | 57.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-25 | 1 | 6 | 32.6 | 21.8 | 33 | 18.1 | 41 | 0.5 | 44.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-26 | 0 | 0 | 33.3 | 22 | 31 | 16 | 37.8 | 0.4 | 44.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-10-27 | 0 | 0 | 33.4 | 20.7 | 30 | 15.8 | 37.1 | 0.2 | 42.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-10-28 | 0 | 0 | 34.5 | 20.5 | 24 | 14.9 | 35.6 | 0 | 43.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-10-29 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 21.7 | 28 | 12.2 | 29.2 | 0.2 | 37.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2026-10-30 | 0 | 0 | 30.3 | 22.5 | 45 | 18.7 | 42.5 | 1.3 | 27.8 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 4,163ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 16 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 79
- in a single hotspot: 89 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 83MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
16 Oct25 Oct
25 Oct 2026
How it evolved, day by day
16 Oct
18 Oct
20 Oct
22 Oct
24 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
41km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity
It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 30 Oct.
This area had burned before
63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,881 ha in 2017, 560 ha in 2019, 526 ha in 2022, 1,730 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,618 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Sanga where it started4,188 ha reached on 16 Oct0.3 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct | 31.3 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 Oct | 31.6 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Oct | 29.8 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Oct | 32.3 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Oct | 35.0 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Oct | 34.8 °C | 27 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 22 Oct | 37.0 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Oct | 36.9 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Oct | 34.7 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 25 Oct | 32.6 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Oct after | 33.3 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Oct after | 33.4 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Oct after | 34.5 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Oct after | 35.0 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Oct after | 30.3 °C | 45 % | 42 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 28 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 9 Oct 2026
After · 1 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
WHO 15
14 Oct16 Oct18 Oct20 Oct22 Oct
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 · 79Every 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
- 24,078 haSanga 13 October 2026 · 22 days · 19 km away
- 16,469 haSanga6 September 2025 · 30 days · 22 km away
- 17,148 haSanga10 September 2018 · 21 days · 24 km away
- 12,364 haSanga3 November 2021 · 10 days · 35 km away
- 15,320 haSanga11 October 2022 · 22 days · 36 km away
- 14,231 haSanga4 October 2026 · 17 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sanga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 October 2026 to 25 October 2026 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 October 2026 to 25 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,163 hectares (41.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sanga (4,188 ha, 0.3 %).
- Is the Sanga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 25 October 2026.
- Area: 3,385 → 4,100 ha.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
Report an error
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 17 October 2026 to 25 October 2026. 79 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.
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.