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Luchazes fire, 6 September 2017 Luchazes

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2017, 13:06 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Luchazes, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,840 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 42th largest in Moxico since 2016 (of 108 with a page). Number 75 in Angola in 2017, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luchazes · 2019Luchazes · 2023Luchazes · 2017Luchazes · 2021

Burnt area
6,840ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
6 Sept 2017 – 16 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2017
Heat detections
243
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
215MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept16 Sept
17 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2017 · 494 MW · 43 7 Sept 2017 · 577 MW · 48 8 Sept 2017 · 31 MW · 18 9 Sept 2017 · 51 MW · 10 10 Sept 2017 · 21 MW · 4 11 Sept 2017 · 40 MW · 6 12 Sept 2017 · 54 MW · 6 13 Sept 2017 · 25 MW · 13 14 Sept 2017 · 1,145 MW · 50 15 Sept 2017 · 85 MW · 15 16 Sept 2017 · 43 MW · 4 17 Sept 2017 · 14 MW · 2
6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 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

34°high
42km/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

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,586 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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. Luchazes where it started
    6,867 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.2 %

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.

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)
6 Sept 32.7 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 32.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Sept 32.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 32.3 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Sept 32.2 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 32.5 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Sept 32.8 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept 33.4 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 33.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 33.3 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept 34.2 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Sept after 33.3 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept after 34.8 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept after 33.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept after 33.0 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Sept after 33.4 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Sept after 32.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Sept after 33.6 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Sept after 34.0 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Sept after 34.7 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Sept after 34.7 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2017
After · 23 Sept 2017

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 · 243Every 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 Luchazes fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2017 and 16 September 2017: 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 6,840 hectares (68.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luchazes (6,867 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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

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. 243 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.