How long did the Chitembo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 20 September 2026 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2026 to 14 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,177 hectares (101.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chitembo (10,240 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.

AO · Angola · 2026-08-22 → 2026-09-20

Chitembo fire, 22 August 2026 Chitembo

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2026, 13:12 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2026 in Chitembo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,177 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 159 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chitembo · 2025 Chitembo · 2025 Chitembo · 2026 Chitembo · 2026

Burnt area: 10,177ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 22 Aug 2026 – 20 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 22 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 335; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 137MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug20 Sept

Play back 21 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 26 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 5 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

50km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 205 ha in 2017, 331 ha in 2018, 939 ha in 2020, 865 ha in 2021, 2,489 ha in 2023, 884 ha in 2024, 4,500 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,860 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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

Chitembo where it started

10,240 ha reached on 22 Aug

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 2025

Built-up area1.3 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
22 Aug	29.3 °C	13 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
23 Aug	29.7 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
24 Aug	30.3 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
25 Aug	30.0 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
26 Aug	29.7 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Aug	31.0 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Aug	30.2 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Aug	29.7 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Aug	30.3 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
31 Aug	30.2 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
1 Sept	29.8 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Sept	31.2 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Sept	31.3 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Sept	30.3 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
5 Sept	30.0 °C	18 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Sept	30.3 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Sept	30.4 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	High 35
8 Sept	30.0 °C	30 %	50 km/h	1.1 mm	High 31
9 Sept	27.6 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
10 Sept	29.6 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Sept	30.2 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Sept	31.4 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
13 Sept	31.3 °C	28 %	26 km/h	2.8 mm	Moderate 13
14 Sept	31.0 °C	30 %	28 km/h	2.5 mm	Moderate 12
15 Sept	30.3 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Sept	31.8 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Sept	32.0 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Sept	30.7 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 35
19 Sept	29.1 °C	33 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	High 34
20 Sept	29.1 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
21 Sept after	29.5 °C	25 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Sept after	27.0 °C	35 %	35 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Aug 2026

After · 27 Sept 2026

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 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 67: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³

Days over the guideline34 days

PM10146 µg/m³

Optical depth1.62

WHO 15

2021222324252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920212223

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 · 335Every 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 Chitembo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 20 September 2026 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2026 to 14 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,177 hectares (101.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chitembo (10,240 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 August 2026 to 14 September 2026. 335 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