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Lubalo fire, 15 July 2016 Lubalo, Lucapa

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2016, 12:24 UTC

The fire started on 15 July 2016 in Lubalo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,063 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 50th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 13 in Angola in 2016, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lubalo · 2026Lucapa · 2020Lucapa · 2026Lubalo · 2026

Burnt area
13,063ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
15 Jul 2016 – 24 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Jul
2016
Heat detections
339
in a single hotspot: 429 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jul24 Jul
25 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 2016 · 451 MW · 34 16 Jul 2016 · 8,831 MW · 96 17 Jul 2016 · 1,085 MW · 47 18 Jul 2016 · 1 MW · 1 19 Jul 2016 · 52 MW · 8 20 Jul 2016 · 136 MW · 23 21 Jul 2016 · 599 MW · 37 22 Jul 2016 · 412 MW · 12 23 Jul 2016 · 885 MW · 40 24 Jul 2016 · 1,015 MW · 29 25 Jul 2016 · 56 MW · 7
15 Jul 16 Jul 17 Jul 19 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul 25 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

32°high
49km/h · peak gust
12%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 8.2% of the area of London (131 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. Lubalo where it started
    6,848 ha reached on 15 Jul
    0.5 %
  2. Lucapa
    6,303 ha reached on 15 Jul
    0.3 %

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)
15 Jul 30.0 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 30.4 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul 30.7 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Jul 30.5 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jul 29.7 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jul 29.9 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jul 29.9 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Jul 31.0 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul 31.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jul 31.9 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jul after 32.3 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jul after 31.9 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul after 31.8 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jul after 32.1 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Jul after 33.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul after 33.8 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Jul after 32.5 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 32.8 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 32.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Aug after 32.9 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Aug after 33.8 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Aug after 31.5 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Aug after 30.8 °C 10 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 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 · 339Every 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 Lubalo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 July 2016 and 24 July 2016: 10 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 13,063 hectares (130.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lubalo (6,848 ha, 0.5 %); Lucapa (6,303 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 339 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.

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.