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Marimba fire, July 2023 Marimba, Cunda-dia-Baze

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2023, 12:06 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2023 in Marimba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,155 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 40th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 66 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marimba · 2016Marimba · 2026Cunda-dia-Baze · 2026Cunda-dia-Baze · 2024

Burnt area
7,155ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
30 Jul 2023 – 15 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2023
Heat detections
229
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
154MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul15 Aug
15 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2023 · 11 MW · 2 31 Jul 2023 · 8 MW · 2 2 Aug 2023 · 207 MW · 7 3 Aug 2023 · 103 MW · 5 4 Aug 2023 · 10 MW · 1 5 Aug 2023 · 187 MW · 17 6 Aug 2023 · 579 MW · 47 7 Aug 2023 · 215 MW · 41 8 Aug 2023 · 294 MW · 62 9 Aug 2023 · 448 MW · 28 10 Aug 2023 · 49 MW · 7 13 Aug 2023 · 0 MW · 1 14 Aug 2023 · 31 MW · 7 15 Aug 2023 · 12 MW · 2
30 Jul 2 Aug 4 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug 14 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

34°high
41km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,032 ha in 2016, 1,455 ha in 2017, 3,241 ha in 2018, 3,274 ha in 2019, 1,483 ha in 2020, 1,319 ha in 2021, 2,862 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,461 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (72 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. Marimba where it started
    6,490 ha reached on 30 Jul
    1.1 %
  2. Cunda-dia-Baze
    715 ha reached on 6 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.

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)
3 Aug 31.7 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Aug 33.5 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug 32.9 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Aug 33.2 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Aug 33.9 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Aug 31.7 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Aug 32.3 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Aug 32.8 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Aug 34.1 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Aug 34.0 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Aug 34.4 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Aug 34.3 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Aug 33.3 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Aug after 33.8 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Aug after 32.6 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Aug after 30.5 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Aug after 33.2 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Aug after 32.6 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2023
After · 22 Aug 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 6 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 120 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak120 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10171 µg/m³
Optical depth1.74
12345678910111213
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 · 229Every 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 Marimba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2023 to 15 August 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2023 to 10 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,155 hectares (71.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Marimba (6,490 ha, 1.1 %); Cunda-dia-Baze (715 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 August 2023 → 15 August 2023.
  2. Start date: 3 August 2023 → 30 July 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 August 2023 to 10 August 2023. 229 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.