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Dirico fire, 22 September 2020 Dirico

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2020, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2020 in Dirico, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,093 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 159th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 17 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dirico · 2016Dirico · 2019Dirico · 2026Dirico · 2017

Burnt area
11,093ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
22 Sept 2020 – 28 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Sept
2020
Heat detections
393
in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
806MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept28 Sept
29 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2020 · 1,772 MW · 108 23 Sept 2020 · 1,091 MW · 74 24 Sept 2020 · 1,348 MW · 64 25 Sept 2020 · 853 MW · 50 26 Sept 2020 · 901 MW · 58 27 Sept 2020 · 71 MW · 7 28 Sept 2020 · 406 MW · 30 29 Sept 2020 · 9 MW · 2
22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 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

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,461 ha in 2016, 1,095 ha in 2017, 2,358 ha in 2018, 1,669 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,055 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7% of the area of London (111 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. Dirico where it started
    11,139 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
22 Sept 36.8 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Sept 35.1 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Sept 35.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Sept 36.5 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept 35.9 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Sept 36.2 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Sept 36.4 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
29 Sept after 36.2 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Sept after 35.4 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 35.8 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct after 35.2 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Oct after 35.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Oct after 37.9 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct after 38.5 °C 12 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
6 Oct after 37.8 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Oct after 36.4 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Oct after 37.0 °C 13 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
9 Oct after 36.8 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Oct after 36.7 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2020
After · 5 Oct 2020

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 · 393Every 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 Dirico fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 September 2020 and 28 September 2020: 7 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 11,093 hectares (110.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dirico (11,139 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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. 393 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.