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Caungula fire, 12 July 2019 Caungula

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2019, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2019 in Caungula, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,128 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 21 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caungula · 2016Caungula · 2017Caungula · 2026Lubalo · 2019

Burnt area
16,128ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
12 Jul 2019 – 3 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Jul
2019
Heat detections
626
in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
425MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul3 Aug
3 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2019 · 1 MW · 1 15 Jul 2019 · 239 MW · 8 18 Jul 2019 · 599 MW · 17 19 Jul 2019 · 220 MW · 25 20 Jul 2019 · 59 MW · 10 21 Jul 2019 · 31 MW · 9 22 Jul 2019 · 485 MW · 77 23 Jul 2019 · 521 MW · 56 24 Jul 2019 · 73 MW · 16 25 Jul 2019 · 1,818 MW · 76 26 Jul 2019 · 2,261 MW · 102 27 Jul 2019 · 280 MW · 48 28 Jul 2019 · 187 MW · 55 29 Jul 2019 · 344 MW · 53 30 Jul 2019 · 326 MW · 38 31 Jul 2019 · 139 MW · 23 2 Aug 2019 · 28 MW · 6 3 Aug 2019 · 31 MW · 6
12 Jul 19 Jul 22 Jul 25 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 31 Jul

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
48km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,143 ha in 2016, 8,865 ha in 2017, 764 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,003 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (161 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. Caungula where it started
    16,243 ha reached on 12 Jul
    1.4 %

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)
12 Jul 30.0 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul 28.3 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jul 29.5 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jul 31.3 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 30.6 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul 29.8 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Jul 30.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul 30.3 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Jul 30.0 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Jul 30.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 29.9 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Jul 30.2 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jul 30.4 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jul 31.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul 30.4 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Jul 31.4 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Jul 30.3 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul 30.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Jul 31.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jul 30.8 °C 15 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug 31.3 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug 30.6 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Aug 28.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 28.8 °C 38 % 30 km/h 2.6 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2019
After · 10 Aug 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 · 626Every 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 Caungula fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 July 2019 to 3 August 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2019 to 31 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,128 hectares (161.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Caungula (16,243 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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: 31 July 2019 → 3 August 2019.
  2. Start date: 19 July 2019 → 12 July 2019.

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 19 July 2019 to 31 July 2019. 626 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.