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Lubalo fire, 10 July 2019 Lubalo

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2019, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2019 in Lubalo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,376 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 11 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lubalo · 2018Lubalo · 2017Lubalo · 2026Lubalo · 2019

Burnt area
21,376ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
10 Jul 2019 – 2 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Jul
2019
Heat detections
1,083
in a single hotspot: 356 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul2 Aug
2 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 2019 · 4 MW · 3 11 Jul 2019 · 223 MW · 15 16 Jul 2019 · 999 MW · 35 17 Jul 2019 · 3,432 MW · 67 18 Jul 2019 · 2,087 MW · 74 19 Jul 2019 · 1,313 MW · 70 20 Jul 2019 · 828 MW · 29 21 Jul 2019 · 539 MW · 38 22 Jul 2019 · 674 MW · 72 23 Jul 2019 · 1,117 MW · 46 24 Jul 2019 · 1,590 MW · 110 25 Jul 2019 · 1,430 MW · 53 26 Jul 2019 · 1,444 MW · 68 27 Jul 2019 · 472 MW · 59 28 Jul 2019 · 1,054 MW · 115 29 Jul 2019 · 2,025 MW · 78 30 Jul 2019 · 619 MW · 23 31 Jul 2019 · 575 MW · 28 1 Aug 2019 · 1,743 MW · 70 2 Aug 2019 · 559 MW · 30
10 Jul 17 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 29 Jul 1 Aug

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
48km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,630 ha in 2016, 13,257 ha in 2017, 133 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,800 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (214 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
    21,490 ha reached on 10 Jul
    1.5 %

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)
10 Jul 30.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Jul 31.7 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul 30.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul 28.9 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Jul 30.1 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jul 31.9 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul 31.2 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jul 30.4 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Jul 30.9 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jul 30.9 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Jul 30.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jul 30.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 30.5 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Jul 30.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Jul 31.0 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jul 32.0 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jul 31.0 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Jul 32.0 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Jul 30.9 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul 31.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Jul 31.6 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul 31.4 °C 15 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug 31.9 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug 31.2 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Aug after 29.3 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Aug after 29.4 °C 39 % 30 km/h 2.6 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2019
After · 9 Aug 2019

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 · 1,083Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 July 2019 to 2 August 2019 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 July 2019 to 31 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,376 hectares (213.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lubalo (21,490 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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: 31 July 2019 → 2 August 2019.
  2. Start date: 15 July 2019 → 10 July 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 July 2019 to 31 July 2019. 1,083 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.