Skip to content
worldfires
en
AO · Angola · →

Catchiungo fire, May 2019 Catchiungo, Bailundo

Out · last detection 16 Jun 2019, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 23 May 2019 in Catchiungo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,081 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 138 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Catchiungo · 2026

Burnt area
6,081ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
23 May 2019 – 15 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
23 May
2019
Heat detections
451
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
131MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 May15 Jun
16 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 May 2019 · 11 MW · 2 24 May 2019 · 42 MW · 3 25 May 2019 · 129 MW · 15 26 May 2019 · 43 MW · 3 27 May 2019 · 37 MW · 4 28 May 2019 · 193 MW · 19 29 May 2019 · 53 MW · 6 30 May 2019 · 32 MW · 5 31 May 2019 · 62 MW · 11 1 Jun 2019 · 115 MW · 12 2 Jun 2019 · 83 MW · 12 3 Jun 2019 · 345 MW · 49 4 Jun 2019 · 417 MW · 51 5 Jun 2019 · 209 MW · 34 6 Jun 2019 · 426 MW · 32 7 Jun 2019 · 45 MW · 10 8 Jun 2019 · 142 MW · 17 9 Jun 2019 · 133 MW · 18 10 Jun 2019 · 137 MW · 23 11 Jun 2019 · 181 MW · 9 12 Jun 2019 · 82 MW · 9 13 Jun 2019 · 234 MW · 15 14 Jun 2019 · 52 MW · 9 15 Jun 2019 · 72 MW · 12 16 Jun 2019 · 4 MW · 1
23 May 27 May 31 May 4 Jun 6 Jun 8 Jun 12 Jun 16 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

26°high
50km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 744 ha in 2017, 2,144 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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. Catchiungo where it started
    5,019 ha reached on 16 May
    1.7 %
  2. Bailundo
    1,092 ha reached on 28 May
    0.2 %

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 area3.9 ha
Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.9 hectares of built-up land and about 500 residents (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)
23 May 25.2 °C 53 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
24 May 24.7 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
25 May 24.2 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 May 22.8 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 May 23.2 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 May 24.1 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 May 25.2 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
30 May 25.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
31 May 25.1 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Jun 26.5 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Jun 25.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jun 23.7 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Jun 23.1 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Jun 23.7 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jun 23.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jun 23.7 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Jun 23.8 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Jun 23.9 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Jun 22.8 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jun 21.6 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jun 22.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jun 22.5 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Jun 22.7 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jun 22.3 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jun after 22.7 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jun after 23.9 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Jun after 23.0 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jun after 22.2 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jun after 22.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jun after 23.8 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Jun after 26.3 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jun after 25.2 °C 24 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jun after 25.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Jun after 25.3 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 May 2019
After · 22 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 · 451Every 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 Catchiungo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 May 2019 and 15 June 2019: 24 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 6,081 hectares (60.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Catchiungo (5,019 ha, 1.7 %); Bailundo (1,092 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % 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

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

No changes since 24 October 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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. 451 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.