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Luchazes fire, 1 September 2019 Luchazes

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2019, 23:12 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2019 in Luchazes, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,059 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Moxico since 2016 (of 108 with a page). Number 18 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luchazes · 2017Bundas · 2025Luchazes · 2019Luchazes · 2019

Burnt area
17,059ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
1 Sept 2019 – 21 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Sept
2019
Heat detections
801
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
626MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2019 · 406 MW · 35 2 Sept 2019 · 2,070 MW · 154 3 Sept 2019 · 1,011 MW · 64 4 Sept 2019 · 30 MW · 3 5 Sept 2019 · 9 MW · 1 6 Sept 2019 · 203 MW · 6 7 Sept 2019 · 1,096 MW · 49 8 Sept 2019 · 107 MW · 30 9 Sept 2019 · 79 MW · 12 10 Sept 2019 · 42 MW · 6 11 Sept 2019 · 1,065 MW · 33 12 Sept 2019 · 165 MW · 14 13 Sept 2019 · 2,362 MW · 71 14 Sept 2019 · 3,489 MW · 211 15 Sept 2019 · 369 MW · 34 16 Sept 2019 · 197 MW · 13 17 Sept 2019 · 167 MW · 27 18 Sept 2019 · 170 MW · 13 19 Sept 2019 · 35 MW · 13 20 Sept 2019 · 70 MW · 8 21 Sept 2019 · 16 MW · 4
1 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 19 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (171 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
    17,215 ha
    0.4 %

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)
1 Sept 30.6 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Sept 32.6 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Sept 33.3 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 34.0 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept 34.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Sept 35.0 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Sept 33.2 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Sept 26.5 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 26.7 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 29.3 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept 32.2 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 35.5 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Sept 35.5 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 35.6 °C 6 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Sept 35.8 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Sept 34.2 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
17 Sept 33.6 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Sept 33.8 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
19 Sept 34.2 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Sept 34.1 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept 35.3 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Sept after 35.5 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept after 35.1 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Sept after 35.3 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
25 Sept after 34.1 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Sept after 28.9 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Sept after 30.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept after 32.0 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Sept after 34.6 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Sept after 35.5 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 33.8 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2019
After · 28 Sept 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 · 0Every 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 1 September 2019 and 21 September 2019: 21 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 17,059 hectares (170.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luchazes (17,215 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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. Start date: 31 August 2019 → 1 September 2019.
  2. Start date: 1 September 2019 → 31 August 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.