Ulanga fire, 7 September 2019 Ulanga, Namtumbo
The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Ulanga, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 35,204 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Morogoro since 2016 (of 144 with a page). Number 2 in Tanzania in 2019, of 123.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 35,204ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 7 Sept 2019 – 28 Sept 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 7 Sept
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 1,294
- in a single hotspot: 49 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 418MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 2 Oct.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,773 ha in 2016, 3,650 ha in 2017, 13 ha in 2018.
- 3,880 ha Namtumbo fire, November 2016 5,427 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,101 ha Ulanga fire, October 2017 4,902 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 532 ha Ulanga fire, October 2017 6,694 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 49 ha Ulanga fire, November 2016 3,066 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 17 ha Namtumbo fire, September 2017 3,172 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 13 ha Ulanga fire, October 2018 8,797 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Ulanga where it started20,397 ha reached on 7 Sept0.9 %
-
15,025 ha reached on 9 Sept0.7 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.56 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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 | 29.7 °C | 24 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Sept | 28.5 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 9 Sept | 28.9 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Sept | 30.4 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Sept | 29.1 °C | 46 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Sept | 30.6 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Sept | 31.1 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Sept | 30.8 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Sept | 30.2 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Sept | 30.0 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 28 |
| 17 Sept | 32.8 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Sept | 31.2 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Sept | 31.0 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Sept | 31.6 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 21 Sept | 31.6 °C | 29 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Sept | 29.8 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Sept | 30.0 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 24 Sept | 30.4 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Sept | 30.3 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Sept | 27.2 °C | 42 % | 41 km/h | 6.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 27 Sept | 29.5 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 28 Sept | 31.5 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Sept after | 32.9 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Sept after | 31.7 °C | 42 % | 29 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Oct after | 32.3 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Oct after | 30.8 °C | 47 % | 38 km/h | 2.7 mm | Low 9 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 1,294Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 26,732 haUlangaOctober 2025 · 30 days · 18 km away
- 21,517 haUlanga9 November 2016 · 11 days · 22 km away
- 31,455 haUlangaSeptember 2018 · 35 days · 23 km away
- 83,831 haUlanga14 September 2021 · 73 days · 30 km away
- 11,393 haUlangaNovember 2022 · 9 days · 31 km away
- 22,550 haNamtumbo 15 October 2026 · 16 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ulanga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2019 to 28 September 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2019 to 23 September 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 35,204 hectares (352.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ulanga (20,397 ha, 0.9 %); Namtumbo (15,025 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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
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: 23 September 2019 → 28 September 2019.
- Start date: 11 September 2019 → 7 September 2019.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2019 to 23 September 2019. 1,294 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.
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.