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Marimba fire, 2 July 2026 Marimba

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2026 in Marimba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 70th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 349 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marimba · 2026Marimba · 2023Marimba · 2026Cunda-dia-Baze · 2026

Burnt area
6,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
2 Jul 2026 – 12 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Jul
2026
Heat detections
146
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
224MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul12 Jul
10 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2026 · 75 MW · 6 3 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 1 4 Jul 2026 · 370 MW · 15 5 Jul 2026 · 173 MW · 18 6 Jul 2026 · 38 MW · 7 7 Jul 2026 · 554 MW · 41 8 Jul 2026 · 25 MW · 16 9 Jul 2026 · 155 MW · 11 10 Jul 2026 · 624 MW · 31
2 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul

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
38km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,759 ha in 2016, 2,171 ha in 2017, 2,321 ha in 2018, 1,782 ha in 2019, 1,744 ha in 2020, 1,897 ha in 2021, 2,769 ha in 2022, 772 ha in 2023, 172 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,843 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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
    6,089 ha reached on 2 Jul
    1.0 %

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)
2 Jul 31.7 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Jul 32.1 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Jul 34.3 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jul 33.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jul 32.9 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jul 33.5 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jul 31.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Jul 31.8 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Jul 32.1 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Jul 31.7 °C 29 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jul 32.9 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Jul after 33.4 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul after 33.5 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jul after 32.3 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul after 31.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul after 31.3 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jul after 30.7 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Jul after 32.1 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul after 28.8 °C 38 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Jul after 29.9 °C 45 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jul after 33.7 °C 26 % 25 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 · 25 Jun 2026
After · 19 Jul 2026

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 12 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 83: 5.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10119 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
30123456789101112131415
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 · 146Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 July 2026 and 12 July 2026: 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 6,048 hectares (60.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Marimba (6,089 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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. 146 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.