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Zumbu fire, 12 September 2018 Zumbu

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2018, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2018 in Zumbu, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,045 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 111th largest in Tete since 2016 (of 115 with a page). Number 212 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zumbu · 2016Zumbu · 2022Zumbu · 2026

Burnt area
3,045ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
12 Sept 2018 – 20 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Sept
2018
Heat detections
155
in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
170MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2018 · 367 MW · 18 13 Sept 2018 · 100 MW · 12 14 Sept 2018 · 195 MW · 17 15 Sept 2018 · 74 MW · 7 16 Sept 2018 · 91 MW · 20 17 Sept 2018 · 65 MW · 11 18 Sept 2018 · 94 MW · 24 19 Sept 2018 · 383 MW · 33 20 Sept 2018 · 163 MW · 13
12 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 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

38°high
37km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,079 ha in 2016, 18 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Zumbu where it started
    3,063 ha reached on 12 Sept
    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)
12 Sept 33.1 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Sept 34.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Sept 36.2 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept 36.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept 36.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 36.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept 37.9 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 37.4 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Sept 36.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Sept after 34.9 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Sept after 34.6 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept after 33.0 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept after 34.7 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept after 36.0 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept after 37.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Sept after 38.6 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept after 37.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Sept after 37.3 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
30 Sept after 31.9 °C 33 % 70 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2018
After · 27 Sept 2018

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 · 155Every 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 Zumbu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 September 2018 and 20 September 2018: 9 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 3,045 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zumbu (3,063 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 155 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.