How long did the Mavinga fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2024 and 10 September 2024: 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 9,114 hectares (91.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mavinga (9,128 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.

AO · Angola · 2024-08-27 → 2024-09-10

Mavinga fire, 27 August 2024 Mavinga

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2024, 23:43 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2024 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 228th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 36 in Angola in 2024, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2016 Mavinga · 2018 Mavinga · 2024 Mavinga · 2019

Burnt area: 9,114ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 27 Aug 2024 – 10 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 27 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 392; in a single hotspot: 189 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 400MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug10 Sept

Play back 11 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 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

55km/h · peak gust

2%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 114 ha in 2016, 771 ha in 2018, 1,044 ha in 2019, 69 ha in 2022, 825 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,413 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (91 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

Mavinga where it started

9,128 ha reached on 20 Aug

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 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)
20 Aug	31.6 °C	6 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
21 Aug	31.0 °C	8 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
22 Aug	31.2 °C	8 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
23 Aug	31.3 °C	8 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
24 Aug	30.7 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
25 Aug	31.0 °C	11 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
26 Aug	31.5 °C	9 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
27 Aug	32.7 °C	3 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
28 Aug	34.0 °C	2 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
29 Aug	34.8 °C	2 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
30 Aug	34.6 °C	7 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
31 Aug	31.9 °C	18 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
1 Sept	30.3 °C	13 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Sept	29.6 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
3 Sept	29.9 °C	6 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
4 Sept	29.7 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
5 Sept	31.3 °C	7 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
6 Sept	33.0 °C	6 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
7 Sept	34.4 °C	7 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Sept	34.8 °C	4 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
9 Sept	35.8 °C	6 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
10 Sept	35.9 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
11 Sept after	35.7 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
12 Sept after	35.9 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
13 Sept after	36.3 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
14 Sept after	37.4 °C	10 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
15 Sept after	37.9 °C	7 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
16 Sept after	38.9 °C	4 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
17 Sept after	37.3 °C	10 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
18 Sept after	37.4 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
19 Sept after	37.4 °C	6 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
20 Sept after	37.7 °C	9 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Sept after	35.6 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Aug 2024

After · 17 Sept 2024

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 29 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak50 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1071 µg/m³

Optical depth0.64

WHO 15

2526272829303112345678910111213

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 · 392Every 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 Mavinga fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2024 and 10 September 2024: 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 9,114 hectares (91.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mavinga (9,128 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 392 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.

Where it burned