How long did the Camacupa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 27 September 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,899 hectares (119.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Camacupa (11,336 ha, 1.2 %); Cuemba (631 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

AO · Angola · 2026-09-01 → 2026-09-27

Camacupa fire, 1 September 2026 Camacupa, Cuemba

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2026, 12:59 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2026 in Camacupa, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,899 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 16th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 130 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Camacupa · 2025 Cuemba · 2025 Cuemba · 2025 Cuemba · 2025

Burnt area: 11,899ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 1 Sept 2026 – 27 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 1 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 311; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 225MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept27 Sept

Play back 27 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 23 Sept 27 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

33°high

45km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 28 Sept.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 142 ha in 2017, 15 ha in 2020, 1,286 ha in 2021, 446 ha in 2022, 856 ha in 2023, 3,597 ha in 2024, 8,458 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,814 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.5% of the area of London (119 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

11,336 ha reached on 1 Sept

1.2 %
Cuemba

631 ha reached on 11 Sept

0.0 %

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 area3.5 ha

Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.5 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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)
1 Sept	31.4 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
2 Sept	32.8 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
3 Sept	31.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
4 Sept	30.1 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 36
5 Sept	29.2 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
6 Sept	31.2 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
7 Sept	30.5 °C	36 %	30 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 15
8 Sept	31.8 °C	30 %	45 km/h	2.6 mm	Moderate 16
9 Sept	30.1 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Sept	30.9 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Sept	31.6 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Sept	31.8 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Sept	32.4 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
14 Sept	33.1 °C	28 %	21 km/h	0.6 mm	High 28
15 Sept	30.0 °C	35 %	31 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 14
16 Sept	33.3 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
17 Sept	33.4 °C	21 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Sept	32.5 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
19 Sept	30.3 °C	33 %	38 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 15
20 Sept	28.7 °C	43 %	30 km/h	6.4 mm	Very low 5
21 Sept	29.1 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 13
22 Sept	27.1 °C	43 %	25 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 8
23 Sept	28.1 °C	44 %	33 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 4
24 Sept	29.4 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 11
25 Sept	33.3 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Sept	33.0 °C	25 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Sept	31.3 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 Sept after	30.4 °C	36 %	33 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2026

After · 4 Oct 2026

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 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³

Days over the guideline23 days

PM1084 µg/m³

Optical depth1.27

WHO 15

6789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 311Every 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 Camacupa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 27 September 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,899 hectares (119.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Camacupa (11,336 ha, 1.2 %); Cuemba (631 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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.

25 October 2026 Start date: 8 September 2026 → 1 September 2026.

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.

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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 8 September 2026 to 20 September 2026. 311 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