Skip to content
worldfires
en
AO · Angola · →

Cunda-dia-Baze fire, July 2016 Cunda-dia-Baze, Marimba

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2016, 12:43 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2016 in Cunda-dia-Baze, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,435 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 98th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 110 in Angola in 2016, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cunda-dia-Baze · 2026Cunda-dia-Baze · 2024Marimba · 2026Marimba · 2023

Burnt area
5,435ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
10 Jul 2016 – 24 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
10 Jul
2016
Heat detections
168
in a single hotspot: 433 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
140MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul24 Jul
24 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 2016 · 41 MW · 6 11 Jul 2016 · 0 MW · 1 12 Jul 2016 · 4 MW · 2 13 Jul 2016 · 2 MW · 2 14 Jul 2016 · 9 MW · 3 15 Jul 2016 · 14 MW · 3 17 Jul 2016 · 284 MW · 10 18 Jul 2016 · 51 MW · 13 19 Jul 2016 · 37 MW · 9 20 Jul 2016 · 832 MW · 18 21 Jul 2016 · 342 MW · 30 22 Jul 2016 · 229 MW · 43 23 Jul 2016 · 100 MW · 24 24 Jul 2016 · 10 MW · 4
10 Jul 12 Jul 14 Jul 17 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul

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
37km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Cunda-dia-Baze where it started
    4,340 ha reached on 10 Jul
    1.3 %
  2. Marimba
    1,126 ha reached on 10 Jul
    0.2 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
17 Jul 32.6 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jul 32.3 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Jul 32.3 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jul 31.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jul 31.9 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jul 32.0 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jul 32.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Jul 33.4 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jul after 32.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul after 32.2 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jul after 32.9 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul after 33.5 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jul after 34.4 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul after 32.9 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul after 33.0 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 34.0 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Aug after 35.0 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Aug after 35.0 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2016
After · 31 Jul 2016

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 · 168Every 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 Cunda-dia-Baze fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 July 2016 to 24 July 2016 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 July 2016 to 24 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,435 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cunda-dia-Baze (4,340 ha, 1.3 %); Marimba (1,126 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 17 July 2016 → 10 July 2016.

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?

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 17 July 2016 to 24 July 2016. 168 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 2015, 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.