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Cacuso fire, May 2019 Cacuso

Out · last detection 11 Jun 2019, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 30 May 2019 in Cacuso, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,203 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 113th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 185 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cacuso · 2018Cacuso · 2023Cacuso · 2018Cacuso · 2020

Burnt area
5,203ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
30 May 2019 – 11 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 May
2019
Heat detections
206
in a single hotspot: 221 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
251MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 May11 Jun
11 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 May 2019 · 2 MW · 1 31 May 2019 · 210 MW · 16 1 Jun 2019 · 7 MW · 1 2 Jun 2019 · 37 MW · 7 3 Jun 2019 · 445 MW · 16 4 Jun 2019 · 222 MW · 9 5 Jun 2019 · 465 MW · 34 6 Jun 2019 · 101 MW · 12 7 Jun 2019 · 38 MW · 7 8 Jun 2019 · 266 MW · 22 9 Jun 2019 · 52 MW · 3 10 Jun 2019 · 1,218 MW · 37 11 Jun 2019 · 205 MW · 20
30 May 1 Jun 3 Jun 5 Jun 7 Jun 9 Jun 10 Jun 11 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
50km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 765 ha in 2016, 1,840 ha in 2017, 3,558 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,510 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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. Cacuso where it started
    5,237 ha reached on 30 May
    0.8 %

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)
30 May 29.8 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 May 30.1 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Jun 29.9 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Jun 31.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Jun 29.2 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Jun 27.8 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jun 28.6 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jun 28.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Jun 29.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jun 30.0 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Jun 30.0 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jun 28.6 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jun 27.8 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jun after 28.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jun after 29.4 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Jun after 29.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Jun after 28.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Jun after 28.6 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jun after 30.2 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Jun after 29.9 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jun after 28.5 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jun after 29.5 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jun after 30.4 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 May 2019
After · 18 Jun 2019

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 · 206Every 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 Cacuso fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 May 2019 and 11 June 2019: 13 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 5,203 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cacuso (5,237 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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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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. 206 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.

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.