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Cunda-dia-Baze fire, 17 July 2018 Cunda-dia-Baze

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2018, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2018 in Cunda-dia-Baze, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 37 in Angola in 2018, of 100.

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Burnt area
7,456ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
17 Jul 2018 – 31 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Jul
2018
Heat detections
205
in a single hotspot: 207 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
627MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2018 · 1,413 MW · 19 18 Jul 2018 · 52 MW · 4 19 Jul 2018 · 160 MW · 10 20 Jul 2018 · 4 MW · 2 21 Jul 2018 · 1,088 MW · 21 23 Jul 2018 · 2,387 MW · 93 24 Jul 2018 · 1,003 MW · 48 28 Jul 2018 · 137 MW · 6 30 Jul 2018 · 18 MW · 1 31 Jul 2018 · 4 MW · 1
17 Jul 19 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 30 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

34°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,565 ha in 2016, 1,120 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,264 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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
    7,509 ha reached on 17 Jul
    2.2 %

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 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)
17 Jul 32.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jul 31.3 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul 32.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jul 32.2 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jul 33.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul 32.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jul 34.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jul 32.3 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Jul 31.4 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Jul 32.5 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Jul 32.1 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Jul 33.1 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jul 32.6 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul 33.3 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Jul 32.8 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug after 32.0 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Aug after 32.8 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug after 33.2 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug after 32.9 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Aug after 33.7 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Aug after 34.4 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug after 33.4 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Aug after 33.1 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Aug after 33.2 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 34.6 °C 35 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2018
After · 7 Aug 2018

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 · 205Every 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 17 July 2018 to 31 July 2018 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 July 2018 to 25 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,456 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cunda-dia-Baze (7,509 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 July 2018 → 31 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 20 July 2018 → 17 July 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 July 2018 to 25 July 2018. 205 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.