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Mavinga fire, 7 September 2023 Mavinga

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2023, 12:29 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2023 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,830 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 41th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 5 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2019Mavinga · 2019Mavinga · 2019Mavinga · 2024

Burnt area
20,830ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
7 Sept 2023 – 20 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2023
Heat detections
817
in a single hotspot: 443 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.9GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2023 · 1,340 MW · 93 9 Sept 2023 · 1,492 MW · 75 10 Sept 2023 · 550 MW · 37 11 Sept 2023 · 2,662 MW · 109 12 Sept 2023 · 355 MW · 38 13 Sept 2023 · 13,970 MW · 233 14 Sept 2023 · 2,263 MW · 137 15 Sept 2023 · 447 MW · 34 16 Sept 2023 · 668 MW · 33 17 Sept 2023 · 298 MW · 16 18 Sept 2023 · 18 MW · 5 19 Sept 2023 · 63 MW · 6 20 Sept 2023 · 9 MW · 1
8 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 20 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

36°high
47km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13,894 ha in 2019, 290 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (208 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
    20,839 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.5 %

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)
7 Sept 34.0 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept 33.8 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Sept 33.6 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Sept 33.4 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 35.3 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Sept 31.6 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Sept 32.6 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Sept 32.9 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Sept 33.1 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Sept 34.1 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 35.1 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept 36.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Sept 34.7 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 34.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept after 35.1 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Sept after 34.7 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
23 Sept after 35.8 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
24 Sept after 34.1 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept after 35.0 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept after 32.6 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Sept after 32.3 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept after 33.8 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Sept after 34.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Sept after 32.8 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2023
After · 27 Sept 2023

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 11 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10126 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
5678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 817Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2023 to 20 September 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2023 to 19 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,830 hectares (208.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (20,839 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 47 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 September 2023 to 19 September 2023. 817 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.