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Mavinga fire, 17 September 2018 Mavinga

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2018, 11:51 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,348 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 186th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 13 in Angola in 2018, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2025Mavinga · 2024Mavinga · 2019Mavinga · 2016

Burnt area
10,348ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
17 Sept 2018 – 24 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Sept
2018
Heat detections
453
in a single hotspot: 247 MW
Danger at start
61
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept24 Sept
24 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2018 · 493 MW · 24 18 Sept 2018 · 1,171 MW · 37 19 Sept 2018 · 392 MW · 12 20 Sept 2018 · 2,988 MW · 105 21 Sept 2018 · 4,855 MW · 194 22 Sept 2018 · 1,103 MW · 61 23 Sept 2018 · 284 MW · 14 24 Sept 2018 · 27 MW · 6
17 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 23 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

37°high
46km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 149 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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. Mavinga where it started
    10,365 ha reached on 17 Sept
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
17 Sept 36.0 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
18 Sept 37.1 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Sept 37.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Sept 35.7 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Sept 36.1 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Sept 34.4 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
23 Sept 34.9 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Sept 36.2 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Sept after 35.4 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Sept after 35.2 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Sept after 36.1 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Sept after 36.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Sept after 36.1 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
30 Sept after 33.9 °C 15 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
1 Oct after 32.8 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
2 Oct after 33.1 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Oct after 34.6 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Oct after 35.4 °C 8 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2018
After · 1 Oct 2018

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

Detections table · 453Every 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 Mavinga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 24 September 2018: 8 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 10,348 hectares (103.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (10,365 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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. 453 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 2020, 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.