Dirico fire, 17 August 2023 Dirico
The fire started on 17 August 2023 in Dirico, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,075 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 18th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 2 in Angola in 2023, of 158.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dirico · 2018Dirico · 2021Dirico · 2016Dirico · 2017
- Burnt area
- 32,075ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 17 Aug 2023 – 27 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 17 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1,484
- in a single hotspot: 146 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.0GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,484 ha in 2016, 11,608 ha in 2017, 7,708 ha in 2018, 2,821 ha in 2019, 10,122 ha in 2020, 8,374 ha in 2021, 13,062 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 29,212 ha that had burned before.
- 7,417 ha Dirico fire, September 2018 29,098 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,515 ha Dirico fire, September 2021 14,488 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,223 ha Dirico fire, September 2016 6,501 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,099 ha Dirico fire, August 2017 5,813 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,495 ha Dirico fire, October 2020 6,030 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,559 ha Dirico fire, August 2020 8,820 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,754 ha Dirico fire, August 2022 5,654 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 906 ha Dirico fire, August 2022 24,522 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Dirico where it started32,238 ha reached on 17 Aug1.7 %
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.
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 Aug | 31.6 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 18 Aug | 32.7 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Aug | 32.3 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 Aug | 33.4 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 21 Aug | 34.0 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Aug | 35.0 °C | 11 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 23 Aug | 35.0 °C | 11 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Aug | 34.4 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 25 Aug | 34.7 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 26 Aug | 33.1 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 27 Aug | 30.6 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 28 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 32 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 29 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 10 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 10 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 23 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 1,484Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dirico fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 August 2023 and 27 August 2023: 11 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 32,075 hectares (320.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Dirico (32,238 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.
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
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. 1,484 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.
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.