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Cuangar fire, 16 September 2022 Cuangar

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2022, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2022 in Cuangar, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,971 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 369th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 58 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuangar · 2025Cuangar · 2026Calai · 2022Calai · 2026

Burnt area
6,971ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
16 Sept 2022 – 23 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Sept
2022
Heat detections
347
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
61
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
361MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept23 Sept
24 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2022 · 398 MW · 35 17 Sept 2022 · 151 MW · 12 18 Sept 2022 · 104 MW · 11 19 Sept 2022 · 545 MW · 30 20 Sept 2022 · 497 MW · 53 21 Sept 2022 · 321 MW · 31 22 Sept 2022 · 226 MW · 12 23 Sept 2022 · 996 MW · 47 24 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 2
16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 24 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

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,372 ha in 2016, 1,170 ha in 2017, 1,196 ha in 2018, 1,331 ha in 2019, 479 ha in 2020, 551 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,048 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Cuangar where it started
    7,014 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.4 %

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.

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)
16 Sept 31.6 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
17 Sept 32.7 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Sept 34.7 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept 34.2 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Sept 30.3 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 Sept 32.5 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Sept 35.1 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Sept 36.3 °C 6 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
24 Sept after 36.5 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
25 Sept after 36.0 °C 15 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Sept after 36.1 °C 13 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Sept after 36.4 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Sept after 36.9 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
29 Sept after 35.2 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
30 Sept after 35.7 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Oct after 36.7 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
2 Oct after 36.2 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
3 Oct after 36.5 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2022
After · 30 Sept 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 · 347Every 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 Cuangar fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2022 and 23 September 2022: 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 6,971 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cuangar (7,014 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 347 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.