How long did the Songea fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2026 to 12 September 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2026 to 11 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,175 hectares (51.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Songea (5,210 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TZ · Tanzania · 2026-08-30 → 2026-09-12

Songea fire, 30 August 2026 Songea

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2026, 11:00 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2026 in Songea, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,175 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Ruvuma since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 74 in Tanzania in 2026, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Songea · 2025 Songea · 2025 Songea · 2026 Songea · 2017

Burnt area: 5,175ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 30 Aug 2026 – 12 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 96MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug12 Sept

Play back 12 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 12 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

27°high

42km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 17 Sept.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 325 ha in 2021, 476 ha in 2022, 1,165 ha in 2023, 1,006 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,017 ha that had burned before.

1,003 ha Songea fire, August 2025 9,861 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

Songea where it started

5,210 ha reached on 30 Aug

0.4 %

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 area27 ha

Residents≈ 2,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 27 hectares of built-up land and about 2,200 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)
30 Aug	25.1 °C	47 %	35 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
31 Aug	24.7 °C	54 %	31 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 7
1 Sept	26.9 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 14
2 Sept	26.9 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
3 Sept	27.1 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
4 Sept	26.8 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Sept	26.7 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
6 Sept	24.7 °C	54 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 20
7 Sept	27.0 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
8 Sept	24.7 °C	44 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
9 Sept	23.6 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
10 Sept	25.4 °C	51 %	32 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 12
11 Sept	26.1 °C	47 %	25 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 9
12 Sept	26.5 °C	44 %	29 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 10
13 Sept after	26.6 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 17
14 Sept after	26.5 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
15 Sept after	27.4 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Sept after	26.0 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
17 Sept after	25.9 °C	51 %	41 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Aug 2026

After · 19 Sept 2026

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 6 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM1059 µg/m³

Optical depth0.78

WHO 15

293031123456789101112131415

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 · 111Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Songea fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2026 to 12 September 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2026 to 11 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,175 hectares (51.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Songea (5,210 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 31 August 2026 → 30 August 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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 31 August 2026 to 11 September 2026. 111 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