How long did the Cazengo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2025 to 13 October 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2025 to 9 October 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,043 hectares (140.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cazengo (10,128 ha, 5.4 %); Golungo Alto (4,005 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

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 · 2025-09-19 → 2025-10-13

Cazengo fire, September 2025 Cazengo, Golungo Alto

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2025, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2025 in Cazengo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Cuanza Norte since 2016 (of 12 with a page). Number 30 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cazengo · 2018 Cazengo · 2024 Golungo Alto · 2025 Cambambe · 2024

Burnt area: 14,043ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 19 Sept 2025 – 13 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 19 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 421; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 13; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 203MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept13 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 4 Oct 7 Oct 10 Oct

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

37km/h · peak gust

43%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 14 Oct.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,864 ha in 2016, 3,350 ha in 2017, 6,714 ha in 2018, 1,610 ha in 2019, 4,889 ha in 2020, 5,282 ha in 2021, 2,092 ha in 2022, 6,069 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,876 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.9% of the area of London (140 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

Cazengo where it started

10,128 ha reached on 19 Sept

5.4 %
Golungo Alto

4,005 ha reached on 19 Sept

2.0 %

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 area6.2 ha

Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.2 hectares of built-up land and about 500 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)
19 Sept	28.9 °C	49 %	31 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 13
20 Sept	25.9 °C	61 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
21 Sept	24.7 °C	66 %	23 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 11
22 Sept	27.6 °C	55 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 13
23 Sept	26.9 °C	59 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
24 Sept	26.6 °C	56 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
25 Sept	27.4 °C	56 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 14
26 Sept	29.2 °C	51 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 17
27 Sept	31.3 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
28 Sept	29.6 °C	47 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
29 Sept	27.6 °C	52 %	31 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 14
30 Sept	27.7 °C	50 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 16
1 Oct	26.5 °C	52 %	28 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 12
2 Oct	31.0 °C	43 %	25 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 10
3 Oct	27.9 °C	56 %	27 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 11
4 Oct	31.3 °C	44 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
5 Oct	30.4 °C	48 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
6 Oct	29.4 °C	52 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
7 Oct	28.4 °C	55 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
8 Oct	28.7 °C	51 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 19
9 Oct	27.4 °C	57 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 15
10 Oct	30.0 °C	50 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 18
11 Oct	25.2 °C	64 %	28 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 3
12 Oct	29.0 °C	53 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 8
13 Oct	27.8 °C	60 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 12
14 Oct after	27.2 °C	59 %	22 km/h	2.5 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Sept 2025

After · 20 Oct 2025

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 3 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 103 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 65: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak103 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10107 µg/m³

Optical depth1.71

WHO 15

24252627282930123456789101112

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 · 421Every 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 Cazengo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2025 to 13 October 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2025 to 9 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,043 hectares (140.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cazengo (10,128 ha, 5.4 %); Golungo Alto (4,005 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 October 2025 → 13 October 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 26 September 2025 → 19 September 2025.

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?

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 26 September 2025 to 9 October 2025. 421 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