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Mavinga fire, 17 September 2020 Mavinga

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2020, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2020 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 127th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 12 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2018Mavinga · 2025Mavinga · 2025Mavinga · 2023

Burnt area
12,252ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
17 Sept 2020 – 28 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Sept
2020
Heat detections
451
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
373MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept28 Sept
29 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2020 · 202 MW · 17 18 Sept 2020 · 465 MW · 23 19 Sept 2020 · 192 MW · 19 20 Sept 2020 · 552 MW · 52 21 Sept 2020 · 345 MW · 36 22 Sept 2020 · 371 MW · 73 23 Sept 2020 · 161 MW · 24 24 Sept 2020 · 672 MW · 25 25 Sept 2020 · 935 MW · 64 26 Sept 2020 · 509 MW · 66 27 Sept 2020 · 119 MW · 9 28 Sept 2020 · 305 MW · 29 29 Sept 2020 · 18 MW · 3
17 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 29 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
45km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,330 ha in 2016, 4,001 ha in 2017, 4,505 ha in 2018, 1,400 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,059 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.7% of the area of London (123 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
    12,356 ha reached on 12 Sept
    0.3 %

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)
12 Sept 30.2 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Sept 30.1 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Sept 32.3 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept 33.6 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 33.9 °C 14 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 35.3 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Sept 31.4 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 34.5 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept 35.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 36.3 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Sept 36.5 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Sept 34.7 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Sept 34.8 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Sept 36.5 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Sept 36.0 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Sept 36.7 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept 36.5 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Sept after 36.7 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Sept after 35.4 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Oct after 35.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm High 37
2 Oct after 35.1 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct after 35.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Oct after 37.7 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Oct after 38.2 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
6 Oct after 37.3 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Oct after 36.8 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct after 36.5 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Oct after 36.5 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Oct after 36.4 °C 11 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2020
After · 5 Oct 2020

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 · 451Every 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 2020 and 28 September 2020: 12 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 12,252 hectares (122.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (12,356 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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. 451 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.