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Cangandala fire, 6 June 2020 Cangandala

Out · last detection 20 Jun 2020, 11:45 UTC

The fire started on 6 June 2020 in Cangandala, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,954 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 33th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 39 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cangandala · 2026Cangandala · 2023Cangandala · 2016Cangandala · 2026

Burnt area
7,954ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
6 Jun 2020 – 20 Jun 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Jun
2020
Heat detections
232
in a single hotspot: 320 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
383MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jun20 Jun
20 Jun 2020

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jun 2020 · 85 MW · 9 8 Jun 2020 · 15 MW · 2 9 Jun 2020 · 66 MW · 3 10 Jun 2020 · 146 MW · 15 11 Jun 2020 · 1,294 MW · 42 12 Jun 2020 · 1,060 MW · 45 13 Jun 2020 · 1,246 MW · 37 14 Jun 2020 · 357 MW · 23 15 Jun 2020 · 166 MW · 20 16 Jun 2020 · 762 MW · 14 17 Jun 2020 · 48 MW · 9 18 Jun 2020 · 39 MW · 4 19 Jun 2020 · 78 MW · 8 20 Jun 2020 · 5 MW · 1
6 Jun 9 Jun 11 Jun 13 Jun 15 Jun 17 Jun 19 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

29°high
39km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 467 ha in 2016, 901 ha in 2017, 1,579 ha in 2018, 3,201 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,024 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (80 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. Cangandala where it started
    8,007 ha reached on 6 Jun
    1.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
9 Jun 29.4 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jun 28.4 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Jun 28.5 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jun 28.9 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Jun 27.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jun 28.1 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Jun 28.1 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jun 27.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Jun 26.8 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jun 25.6 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jun 26.7 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jun 27.2 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Jun after 27.4 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jun after 27.1 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jun after 28.2 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jun after 28.8 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jun after 28.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jun after 29.0 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jun after 28.4 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Jun after 29.2 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jun after 30.3 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 May 2020
After · 27 Jun 2020

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 · 232Every 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 Cangandala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 June 2020 to 20 June 2020 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 June 2020 to 19 June 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,954 hectares (79.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cangandala (8,007 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 June 2020 → 20 June 2020.
  2. Start date: 9 June 2020 → 6 June 2020.

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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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 9 June 2020 to 19 June 2020. 232 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 2020, 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.