How long did the Massango fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2025 and 12 September 2025: 15 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 10,563 hectares (105.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Massango (10,638 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

AO · Angola · 2025-08-29 → 2025-09-12

Massango fire, August 2025 Massango

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2025, 13:17 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2025 in Massango, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,563 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 19th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 51 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Burnt area: 10,563ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 29 Aug 2025 – 12 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 29 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 399; in a single hotspot: 192 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 9.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 12 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug12 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

293031123456789101112

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high

40km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 14 Sept.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2017, 25 ha in 2018, 258 ha in 2019, 1,439 ha in 2020, 2,614 ha in 2022, 3,580 ha in 2023, 3,167 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,849 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Massango where it started

10,638 ha reached on 23 Aug

1.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
23 Aug	30.0 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Aug	30.3 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Aug	25.9 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
26 Aug	30.6 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
27 Aug	31.3 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
28 Aug	24.2 °C	64 %	28 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 10
29 Aug	31.2 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
30 Aug	30.8 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
31 Aug	26.0 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Sept	28.6 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
2 Sept	31.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
3 Sept	30.7 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
4 Sept	29.8 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Sept	29.0 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Sept	30.3 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 Sept	30.0 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Sept	30.2 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Sept	29.0 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Sept	29.9 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Sept	29.9 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
12 Sept	30.5 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Sept after	28.3 °C	43 %	31 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
14 Sept after	31.0 °C	37 %	28 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Aug 2025

After · 19 Sept 2025

Before After

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 2025 the air beside the fire reached 155 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak155 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10159 µg/m³

Optical depth1.88

WHO 15

2728293031123456789101112131415

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 · 399Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Massango fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2025 and 12 September 2025: 15 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 10,563 hectares (105.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Massango (10,638 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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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.

Where it burned