How long did the Dande fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2026 to 19 October 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2026 to 13 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,565 hectares (85.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Dande (8,622 ha, 1.2 %).

Is the Dande fire still active?

No fire detections since 19 Oct 2026, 13:08 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class 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.

AO · Angola · 2026-09-23 → 2026-10-19

Dande fire, 23 September 2026 Dande

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2026, 13:08 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2026 in Dande, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,565 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Bengo since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 195 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dande · 2023 Dande · 2024 Dande · 2025 Dande · 2026

Burnt area: 8,565ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 23 Sept 2026 – 19 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 187; in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 149MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept19 Oct

Play back 19 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 30 Sept 5 Oct 9 Oct 15 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

35°high

38km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,109 ha in 2016, 3,027 ha in 2018, 3,023 ha in 2019, 2,931 ha in 2020, 7,778 ha in 2021, 132 ha in 2022, 5,715 ha in 2023, 4,891 ha in 2024, 6,214 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,288 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (86 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

Dande where it started

8,622 ha reached on 23 Sept

1.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area3.1 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.1 hectares of built-up land and about 400 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)
23 Sept	33.7 °C	44 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
24 Sept	32.7 °C	44 %	32 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 12
25 Sept	32.9 °C	41 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
26 Sept	27.9 °C	55 %	30 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 13
27 Sept	31.0 °C	45 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
28 Sept	29.1 °C	52 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 16
29 Sept	27.8 °C	57 %	16 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 16
30 Sept	31.4 °C	46 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Oct	27.7 °C	59 %	24 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 13
2 Oct	32.5 °C	45 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
3 Oct	31.7 °C	46 %	37 km/h	0.5 mm	High 23
4 Oct	31.2 °C	47 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 21
5 Oct	32.1 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 21
6 Oct	27.2 °C	58 %	23 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 12
7 Oct	33.7 °C	42 %	38 km/h	2.9 mm	Low 11
8 Oct	32.6 °C	45 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 Oct	34.3 °C	40 %	35 km/h	10.0 mm	Very low 5
10 Oct	34.9 °C	38 %	28 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 10
11 Oct	32.5 °C	46 %	36 km/h	2.2 mm	Low 6
12 Oct	29.4 °C	59 %	25 km/h	1.7 mm	Very low 4
13 Oct	33.2 °C	45 %	21 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 8
14 Oct	32.2 °C	54 %	22 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 13
15 Oct	34.1 °C	41 %	21 km/h	4.5 mm	Very low 5
16 Oct	28.5 °C	63 %	19 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 6
17 Oct	30.3 °C	56 %	23 km/h	1.3 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Sept 2026

After · 25 Oct 2026

Before After

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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 104 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak104 µg/m³

Days over the guideline26 days

PM10106 µg/m³

Optical depth2.09

WHO 15

212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617

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 · 187Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dande fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2026 to 19 October 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2026 to 13 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,565 hectares (85.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Dande (8,622 ha, 1.2 %).
Is the Dande fire still active?: No fire detections since 19 Oct 2026, 13:08 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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 30 September 2026 to 13 October 2026. 187 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.

Where it burned