How long did the Bundas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 August 2024 to 8 September 2024 (34 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2024 to 2 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,548 hectares (55.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bundas (5,567 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.

AO · Angola · 2024-08-06 → 2024-09-08

Bundas fire, 6 August 2024 Bundas

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2024, 11:32 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2024 in Bundas, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,548 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 81th largest in Moxico since 2016 (of 108 with a page). Number 100 in Angola in 2024, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bundas · 2023 Bundas · 2024 Bundas · 2024

Burnt area: 5,548ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 34days; 6 Aug 2024 – 8 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 6 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 323; in a single hotspot: 194 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 203MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug8 Sept

Play back 9 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 15 Aug 18 Aug 20 Aug 25 Aug 30 Aug 4 Sept 9 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

34°high

52km/h · peak gust

3%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 340 ha in 2017, 1,208 ha in 2019, 1,437 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,384 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

Bundas where it started

5,567 ha reached on 6 Aug

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
13 Aug	32.0 °C	5 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
14 Aug	31.9 °C	5 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
15 Aug	31.5 °C	7 %	52 km/h	Extreme 66
16 Aug	31.5 °C	8 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
17 Aug	30.6 °C	6 %	42 km/h	Extreme 61
18 Aug	30.6 °C	6 %	39 km/h	Extreme 60
19 Aug	30.6 °C	8 %	43 km/h	Extreme 61
20 Aug	30.8 °C	7 %	37 km/h	Extreme 58
21 Aug	30.3 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
22 Aug	30.3 °C	7 %	39 km/h	Extreme 55
23 Aug	30.6 °C	9 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
24 Aug	30.1 °C	14 %	42 km/h	Extreme 55
25 Aug	30.6 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 51
26 Aug	31.0 °C	8 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Aug	31.5 °C	3 %	41 km/h	Extreme 59
28 Aug	33.4 °C	3 %	34 km/h	Extreme 56
29 Aug	34.3 °C	3 %	33 km/h	Extreme 57
30 Aug	34.2 °C	8 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
31 Aug	31.9 °C	16 %	52 km/h	Extreme 62
1 Sept	30.2 °C	14 %	45 km/h	Extreme 56
2 Sept	29.2 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 56
3 Sept	29.3 °C	7 %	45 km/h	Extreme 56
4 Sept	29.1 °C	8 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
5 Sept	30.9 °C	10 %	35 km/h	Extreme 50
6 Sept	32.3 °C	8 %	35 km/h	Extreme 51
7 Sept	33.5 °C	9 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Sept	34.2 °C	5 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
9 Sept after	34.9 °C	7 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
10 Sept after	34.9 °C	10 %	44 km/h	Extreme 62
11 Sept after	33.8 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
12 Sept after	34.5 °C	14 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jul 2024

After · 15 Sept 2024

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 15 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM1085 µg/m³

Optical depth0.81

WHO 15

11121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345

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 · 323Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bundas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 August 2024 to 8 September 2024 (34 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2024 to 2 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,548 hectares (55.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bundas (5,567 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 2 September 2024 → 8 September 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 13 August 2024 → 6 August 2024.

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?

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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 13 August 2024 to 2 September 2024. 323 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 (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.

Where it burned