How long did the Camacupa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2025 to 20 September 2025 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2025 to 16 September 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,663 hectares (56.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Camacupa (5,706 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 2025-08-31 → 2025-09-20

Camacupa fire, 31 August 2025 Camacupa

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2025, 12:25 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2025 in Camacupa, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,663 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 56th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 144 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Camacupa · 2026

Burnt area: 5,663ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 31 Aug 2025 – 20 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 31 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 210; in a single hotspot: 127 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 216MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug20 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 17 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

34°high

49km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 801 ha in 2016, 12 ha in 2017, 2,188 ha in 2018, 1,061 ha in 2019, 2,064 ha in 2020, 146 ha in 2021, 3,121 ha in 2022, 1,203 ha in 2023, 2,826 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,624 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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

Camacupa where it started

5,706 ha reached on 31 Aug

0.6 %

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 area1.5 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.5 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
31 Aug	32.6 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
1 Sept	32.3 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
2 Sept	32.2 °C	10 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
3 Sept	30.7 °C	8 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
4 Sept	31.0 °C	13 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
5 Sept	32.8 °C	7 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
6 Sept	33.1 °C	8 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
7 Sept	32.8 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
8 Sept	33.4 °C	12 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
9 Sept	31.7 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Sept	32.5 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Sept	33.6 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Sept	33.4 °C	10 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
13 Sept	32.2 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Sept	32.5 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
15 Sept	33.9 °C	15 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Sept	33.8 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Sept	33.0 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Sept	34.1 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Sept	34.5 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
20 Sept	33.0 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
21 Sept after	31.8 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 39
22 Sept after	33.4 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
23 Sept after	29.7 °C	29 %	28 km/h	1.0 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Aug 2025

After · 27 Sept 2025

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 7 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak125 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10128 µg/m³

Optical depth1.36

WHO 15

29303112345678910111213141516171819

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 · 210Every 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

7,204 haCamacupa1 September 2026 · 19 days · 8 km away

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Camacupa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2025 to 20 September 2025 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2025 to 16 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,663 hectares (56.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Camacupa (5,706 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 16 September 2025 → 20 September 2025.

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 31 August 2025 to 16 September 2025. 210 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