How long did the Chitembo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2026 to 27 September 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,014 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chitembo (5,050 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 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.

AO · Angola · 2026-09-09 → 2026-09-27

Chitembo fire, 9 September 2026 Chitembo

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2026, 12:59 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2026 in Chitembo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,014 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 64th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 484 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chitembo · 2025 Chitembo · 2026 Chitembo · 2025

Burnt area: 5,014ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 9 Sept 2026 – 27 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 9 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 145; in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 139MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept27 Sept

Play back 27 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 26 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

33°high

45km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,805 ha in 2016, 1,244 ha in 2017, 4,345 ha in 2019, 779 ha in 2020, 756 ha in 2021, 492 ha in 2022, 1,779 ha in 2023, 326 ha in 2024, 3,589 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,963 ha that had burned before.

2,035 ha Chitembo fire, September 2025 5,515 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

5,050 ha reached on 9 Sept

0.3 %

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 area0.13 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
9 Sept	29.0 °C	27 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Sept	30.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Sept	31.2 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Sept	31.8 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.7 mm	High 36
13 Sept	32.6 °C	21 %	31 km/h	1.1 mm	High 30
14 Sept	31.9 °C	27 %	27 km/h	1.3 mm	High 24
15 Sept	30.5 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
16 Sept	32.4 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Sept	33.1 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Sept	32.3 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Sept	30.8 °C	31 %	42 km/h	3.9 mm	Moderate 12
20 Sept	29.0 °C	31 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Sept	30.2 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Sept	27.6 °C	35 %	32 km/h	1.0 mm	High 22
23 Sept	29.4 °C	34 %	41 km/h	6.3 mm	Low 7
24 Sept	30.5 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Sept	32.9 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Sept	32.9 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Sept	33.0 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Sept after	31.8 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
29 Sept after	31.9 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Sept after	31.7 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.6 mm	High 32
1 Oct after	29.5 °C	31 %	31 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Sept 2026

After · 4 Oct 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 13 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 145 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 86: 5.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak145 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10151 µg/m³

Optical depth1.87

WHO 15

789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 145Every 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 9 September 2026 to 27 September 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,014 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chitembo (5,050 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 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

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.

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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 12 September 2026 to 20 September 2026. 145 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