Massango fire, September 2026 Massango
The fire started on 8 September 2026 in Massango, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,132 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 63th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 339 in Angola in 2026, of 486.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,132ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 8 Sept 2026 – 24 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 106
- in a single hotspot: 135 MW
- Danger at start
- 9
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 156MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 25 Sept.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 287 ha in 2017, 729 ha in 2018, 486 ha in 2019, 882 ha in 2020, 1,054 ha in 2022, 3,205 ha in 2023, 2,417 ha in 2024, 5,661 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,726 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Massango where it started6,175 ha reached on 8 Sept0.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Sept | 32.8 °C | 36 % | 35 km/h | 3.3 mm | Low 9 |
| 9 Sept | 29.6 °C | 49 % | 30 km/h | 5.3 mm | Very low 3 |
| 10 Sept | 27.1 °C | 54 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 11 Sept | 29.5 °C | 49 % | 28 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 12 Sept | 30.3 °C | 44 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 13 Sept | 27.5 °C | 54 % | 24 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 5 |
| 14 Sept | 32.3 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 15 Sept | 28.1 °C | 54 % | 25 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 4 |
| 16 Sept | 31.7 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 1.5 mm | Low 10 |
| 17 Sept | 29.9 °C | 53 % | 25 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 18 Sept | 27.6 °C | 55 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 19 Sept | 28.0 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 20 Sept | 30.7 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 1.8 mm | Low 9 |
| 21 Sept | 25.6 °C | 65 % | 28 km/h | 8.8 mm | Very low 1 |
| 22 Sept | 28.2 °C | 51 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 23 Sept | 31.5 °C | 46 % | 32 km/h | 1.3 mm | Low 6 |
| 24 Sept | 29.8 °C | 57 % | 33 km/h | 8.3 mm | Very low 1 |
| 25 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 42 % | 27 km/h | 4.0 mm | Very low 2 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 9 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 175 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 110: 7.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 106Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,563 haMassangoAugust 2025 · 15 days · 2 km away
- 9,895 haMassango4 August 2026 · 16 days · 23 km away
- 6,217 haMassango26 August 2023 · 13 days · 26 km away
- 8,496 haCangolaAugust 2026 · 28 days · 29 km away
- 6,125 haMassango3 July 2026 · 8 days · 31 km away
- 35,990 haCangolaAugust 2025 · 25 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Massango fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2026 to 24 September 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,132 hectares (61.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Massango (6,175 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
- 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
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.
Report an error
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 13 September 2026 to 20 September 2026. 106 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.
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.