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ZW · Zimbabwe · Bulawayo

Wildfires in Bulawayo

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, has had 4 large fires recorded by GWIS since 2018: 3,759 hectares burned inside its boundaries, 6.9% of its area. Fire danger today: very high (FWI 39).

Only fires of 1,000 ha or more get an entry: smaller ones are not in the lists or the totals on this page.

Fire danger, today and the coming days

FWI computed from the Open-Meteo forecast
  1. Sat 24 Very high 30° · 37 % · 49 km/h
  2. Sun 25 Very high 33° · 21 % · 39 km/h
  3. Mon 26 Very high 34° · 17 % · 31 km/h
  4. Tue 27 Moderate 35° · 19 % · 42 km/h
  5. Wed 28 High 31° · 26 % · 37 km/h
  6. Thu 29 High 28° · 41 % · 42 km/h
  7. Fri 30 High 30° · 25 % · 46 km/h
  8. Sat 31 High 32° · 23 % · 45 km/h

Canadian Fire Weather Index, the same system Copernicus uses, computed by WorldFires from the weather forecast and two months of past weather for fuel state. It is an estimate per municipality, not an official warning: warnings are issued by each country’s emergency service.

The municipality and its fires

Since 2016

3,759
hectares burned
6.9 %
of its area
4
fires
548
km²

How many times has Bulawayo burned?

Bulawayo has burned 4 times since 2016, in 3 years: 2018, 2022 and 2025. The most recent: Bulawayo fire, August 2025, with 914 hectares inside the municipality. Together they add up to 3,759 hectares burned inside the municipality, but the distinct burned area is 3,488 hectares, 6.4 % of its surface: part of it burned more than once.

  1.   16
  2.   17
  3. 1× 18
  4.   19
  5.   20
  6.   21
  7. 2× 22
  8.   23
  9.   24
  10. 1× 25
  11.   26
4
fires
3
years with fire
3,759
cumulative ha
3,488
distinct ha

Fires larger than 1,000 hectares with a perimeter since 2016 that reached the municipality, even partly. Cumulative hectares add up every fire; the distinct area counts land that burned several times only once. Perimeters and boundaries overlaid by WorldFires.

Where it has burned most often in Zimbabwe →

Fires that entered Bulawayo

  1. 914 ha Bulawayo fire, August 2025 where it started 1.7% of the municipality · 1,188 ha in total · 2 days
  2. 1,163 ha Bulawayo fire, 13 October 2022 where it started 2.1% of the municipality · 1,170 ha in total · 1 day
  3. 1,343 ha Bulawayo fire, 4 October 2022 where it started 2.4% of the municipality · 1,343 ha in total · 1 day
  4. 338 ha Umguza fire, 20 September 2018 0.6% of the municipality · 1,250 ha in total · 2 days

Where this data comes from

Perimeters come from GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), rebuilt from heat detections, and municipal boundaries from geoBoundaries/Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT www.zimstat.co.zw) Central Statistics Office, OCHA ROSEA (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing both. The forecast is from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).

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