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Bailundo fire, August 2026 Bailundo

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2026, 13:38 UTC

The fire started on 5 August 2026 in Bailundo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,231 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 331 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Burnt area
6,231ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
5 Aug 2026 – 23 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Aug
2026
Heat detections
205
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Aug23 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

5678910111314151617181920212224

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

30°high
46km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 7 Sept.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17 ha in 2017, 1,220 ha in 2018, 954 ha in 2019, 2,516 ha in 2020, 1,937 ha in 2022, 1,273 ha in 2023, 2,178 ha in 2024, 3,192 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,621 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Bailundo where it started
    6,271 ha reached on 29 Jul
    0.9 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
29 Jul 25.4 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul 26.3 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul 27.4 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Aug 26.5 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Aug 26.2 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Aug 26.4 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Aug 25.8 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Aug 26.3 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug 26.4 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug 27.0 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Aug 27.3 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Aug 27.4 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug 27.8 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug 27.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Aug 27.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Aug 27.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug 27.4 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug 28.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Aug 27.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Aug 26.8 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Aug 27.7 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Aug 28.1 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Aug 28.0 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Aug 28.3 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Aug 28.0 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Aug 29.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Aug after 29.3 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Aug after 29.4 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug after 28.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug after 30.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug after 29.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug after 28.7 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Aug after 28.2 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Aug after 27.4 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
1 Sept after 28.1 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
2 Sept after 29.3 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Sept after 28.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept after 26.7 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept after 27.1 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
6 Sept after 27.8 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
7 Sept after 28.2 °C 32 % 31 km/h 3.9 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jul 2026
After · 30 Aug 2026

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 22 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 146 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 87: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak146 µg/m³
Days over the guideline37 days
PM10149 µg/m³
Optical depth1.63
2728293031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311
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 · 205Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bailundo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 August 2026 and 23 August 2026: 19 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 6,231 hectares (62.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bailundo (6,271 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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

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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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 (Public Domain). 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.