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Luchazes fire, 14 September 2019 Luchazes

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2019, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Luchazes, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,360 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Moxico since 2016 (of 108 with a page). Number 8 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luchazes · 2016Luchazes · 2022Luchazes · 2019Luchazes · 2019

Burnt area
27,360ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
14 Sept 2019 – 2 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
1,134
in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
975MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept2 Oct
2 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 351 MW · 25 15 Sept 2019 · 1,283 MW · 77 16 Sept 2019 · 1,764 MW · 92 17 Sept 2019 · 6,265 MW · 254 18 Sept 2019 · 1,331 MW · 93 19 Sept 2019 · 1,023 MW · 77 20 Sept 2019 · 1,292 MW · 56 21 Sept 2019 · 238 MW · 33 22 Sept 2019 · 1,786 MW · 69 23 Sept 2019 · 23 MW · 19 24 Sept 2019 · 637 MW · 115 25 Sept 2019 · 803 MW · 70 26 Sept 2019 · 4 MW · 4 27 Sept 2019 · 176 MW · 22 28 Sept 2019 · 268 MW · 32 29 Sept 2019 · 717 MW · 45 30 Sept 2019 · 403 MW · 33 1 Oct 2019 · 93 MW · 9 2 Oct 2019 · 74 MW · 9
14 Sept 17 Sept 20 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 2 Oct

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
51km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 9 Oct.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,702 ha in 2016, 3,854 ha in 2017, 869 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (274 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
    27,619 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.7 %

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.

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)
14 Sept 35.8 °C 6 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Sept 36.0 °C 9 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Sept 34.3 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Sept 33.9 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Sept 34.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Sept 34.4 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Sept 34.4 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept 35.6 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Sept 35.8 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Sept 35.3 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
24 Sept 35.4 °C 11 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
25 Sept 34.6 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Sept 29.3 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept 30.8 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Sept 32.3 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Sept 34.9 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Sept 35.6 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Oct 34.0 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Oct 35.7 °C 7 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Oct after 35.2 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 57
4 Oct after 34.5 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct after 33.0 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Oct after 34.9 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Oct after 36.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct after 36.8 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Oct after 32.0 °C 32 % 30 km/h 2.5 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2019
After · 9 Oct 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 · 1,134Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2019 to 2 October 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2019 to 28 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,360 hectares (273.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luchazes (27,619 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 September 2019 → 2 October 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 14 September 2019 to 28 September 2019. 1,134 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.