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Cuemba fire, 31 August 2025 Cuemba

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2025, 12:44 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2025 in Cuemba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 45th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 112 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuemba · 2025Cuemba · 2026Camacupa · 2025Camacupa · 2026

Burnt area
6,364ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
31 Aug 2025 – 18 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Aug
2025
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
125MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug18 Sept
19 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2025 · 5 MW · 1 2 Sept 2025 · 26 MW · 5 3 Sept 2025 · 18 MW · 7 4 Sept 2025 · 883 MW · 61 5 Sept 2025 · 42 MW · 5 6 Sept 2025 · 51 MW · 10 7 Sept 2025 · 722 MW · 45 8 Sept 2025 · 4 MW · 1 9 Sept 2025 · 47 MW · 6 10 Sept 2025 · 53 MW · 3 11 Sept 2025 · 229 MW · 19 12 Sept 2025 · 57 MW · 6 13 Sept 2025 · 44 MW · 6 14 Sept 2025 · 42 MW · 4 15 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 2 16 Sept 2025 · 12 MW · 2 17 Sept 2025 · 4 MW · 1 19 Sept 2025 · 4 MW · 1
31 Aug 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 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

34°high
51km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 943 ha in 2016, 813 ha in 2017, 445 ha in 2018, 1,147 ha in 2019, 2,550 ha in 2021, 876 ha in 2022, 2,886 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,051 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 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. Cuemba where it started
    6,414 ha reached on 29 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 area0.89 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.89 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
31 Aug 32.4 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Sept 31.8 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Sept 32.0 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Sept 30.7 °C 9 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Sept 31.0 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Sept 32.9 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept 33.0 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Sept 32.5 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Sept 32.5 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 31.2 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 32.2 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 33.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept 32.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept 30.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 31.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept 33.1 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Sept 33.2 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 32.8 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 33.6 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept after 33.8 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept after 33.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept after 31.0 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
22 Sept after 32.9 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
23 Sept after 30.0 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.8 mm High 28
24 Sept after 34.3 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Sept after 32.6 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept after 31.8 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Sept after 31.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
28 Sept after 33.2 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2025
After · 25 Sept 2025

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 7 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 70: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak113 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth1.45
293031123456789101112131415161718192021
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 · 198Every 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 Cuemba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 August 2025 and 18 September 2025: 19 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 6,364 hectares (63.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cuemba (6,414 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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. 198 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.