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Luchazes fire, 26 August 2023 Luchazes

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2023, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2023 in Luchazes, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,026 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Moxico since 2016 (of 108 with a page). Number 48 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luchazes · 2019Luchazes · 2017Luchazes · 2017Luchazes · 2017

Burnt area
8,026ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
26 Aug 2023 – 10 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Aug
2023
Heat detections
372
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
250MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 2023 · 52 MW · 5 27 Aug 2023 · 265 MW · 18 28 Aug 2023 · 309 MW · 29 29 Aug 2023 · 40 MW · 7 30 Aug 2023 · 51 MW · 19 31 Aug 2023 · 319 MW · 32 1 Sept 2023 · 623 MW · 45 2 Sept 2023 · 505 MW · 44 3 Sept 2023 · 873 MW · 68 4 Sept 2023 · 173 MW · 23 5 Sept 2023 · 247 MW · 26 6 Sept 2023 · 142 MW · 12 7 Sept 2023 · 29 MW · 3 8 Sept 2023 · 258 MW · 8 9 Sept 2023 · 98 MW · 21 10 Sept 2023 · 15 MW · 4
26 Aug 29 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 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

33°high
54km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 275 ha in 2016, 3,443 ha in 2017, 545 ha in 2018, 1,830 ha in 2019, 3,916 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,169 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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
    8,055 ha reached on 20 Aug
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
26 Aug 33.0 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Aug 32.5 °C 11 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Aug 29.7 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Aug 28.5 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Aug 27.7 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Aug 29.3 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept 31.4 °C 6 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Sept 32.1 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Sept 32.9 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Sept 32.6 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Sept 31.7 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Sept 32.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Sept 32.7 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Sept 33.1 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
9 Sept 32.9 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
10 Sept 33.2 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Sept after 33.2 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Sept after 31.9 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept after 31.7 °C 17 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Sept after 31.6 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept after 32.4 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept after 33.6 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept after 34.9 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept after 33.6 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept after 33.0 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Sept after 32.6 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2023
After · 17 Sept 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 3 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM1092 µg/m³
Optical depth1.20
242526272829303112345678910111213
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 372Every 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 26 August 2023 and 10 September 2023: 16 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 8,026 hectares (80.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luchazes (8,055 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 372 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 2025, 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.