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Caungula fire, 14 July 2022 Caungula

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2022, 11:59 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2022 in Caungula, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,978 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 260th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 93 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caungula · 2019Caungula · 2020Caungula · 2026Lubalo · 2019

Burnt area
5,978ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
14 Jul 2022 – 22 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Jul
2022
Heat detections
172
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
189MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul22 Jul
22 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2022 · 180 MW · 18 15 Jul 2022 · 140 MW · 18 16 Jul 2022 · 742 MW · 67 17 Jul 2022 · 125 MW · 24 18 Jul 2022 · 77 MW · 12 19 Jul 2022 · 16 MW · 3 20 Jul 2022 · 143 MW · 18 22 Jul 2022 · 90 MW · 12
14 Jul 16 Jul 18 Jul 20 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

30°high
46km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,417 ha in 2016, 2,466 ha in 2017, 3,557 ha in 2019, 3,057 ha in 2020, 469 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,890 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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
    6,021 ha reached on 14 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
14 Jul 29.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jul 29.3 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jul 28.5 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul 29.1 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Jul 29.4 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul 29.2 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jul 28.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jul 29.8 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 29.1 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jul after 29.1 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jul after 31.2 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jul after 31.1 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jul after 30.7 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jul after 31.2 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jul after 30.6 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jul after 29.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jul after 30.0 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2022
After · 29 Jul 2022

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 · 172Every 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 14 July 2022 to 22 July 2022 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2022 to 20 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,978 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Caungula (6,021 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 July 2022 → 22 July 2022.

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 14 July 2022 to 20 July 2022. 172 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.