Cuangar fire, 19 August 2016 Cuangar
The fire started on 19 August 2016 in Cuangar, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,000 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 286th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 43 in Angola in 2016, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,000ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 19 Aug 2016 – 26 Aug 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Aug
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 305
- in a single hotspot: 103 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 499MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Cuangar where it started8,039 ha reached on 18 Aug0.4 %
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.
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 Aug | 33.2 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Aug | 33.3 °C | 12 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Aug | 33.8 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 22 Aug | 34.3 °C | 9 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 23 Aug | 32.8 °C | 10 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 24 Aug | 32.8 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 25 Aug | 31.3 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 26 Aug | 31.1 °C | 11 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 27 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 6 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 28 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 10 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 29 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 10 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 30 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 13 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 31 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 1 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 2 Sept after | 32.6 °C | 9 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 3 Sept after | 31.4 °C | 12 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 4 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 305Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cuangar fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 August 2016 and 26 August 2016: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,000 hectares (80.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cuangar (8,039 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 305 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.
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.