How long did the Mbanza Congo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 24 September 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 22 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,868 hectares (68.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mbanza Congo (6,909 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.

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 · 2026-09-01 → 2026-09-24

Mbanza Congo fire, September 2026 Mbanza Congo

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2026, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2026 in Mbanza Congo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 282 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 6,868ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 1 Sept 2026 – 24 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 1 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 154; in a single hotspot: 143 MW
Danger at start: 13; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept24 Sept

Play back 24 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 21 Sept 24 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

34°high

34km/h · peak gust

43%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,169 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (69 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

Mbanza Congo where it started

6,909 ha reached on 1 Sept

1.2 %

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 area7.0 ha

Residents≈ 1,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.0 hectares of built-up land and about 1,600 residents (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)
1 Sept	32.8 °C	45 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
2 Sept	31.8 °C	49 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
3 Sept	25.5 °C	68 %	23 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 12
4 Sept	29.7 °C	59 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
5 Sept	28.5 °C	59 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
6 Sept	30.0 °C	51 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
7 Sept	32.5 °C	50 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
8 Sept	31.5 °C	51 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
9 Sept	27.8 °C	58 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
10 Sept	26.9 °C	61 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
11 Sept	27.8 °C	62 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
12 Sept	30.9 °C	52 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
13 Sept	27.8 °C	57 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
14 Sept	34.4 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Sept	29.9 °C	51 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Sept	29.0 °C	54 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
17 Sept	27.0 °C	61 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Sept	26.5 °C	66 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
19 Sept	28.8 °C	57 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
20 Sept	30.9 °C	51 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
21 Sept	27.7 °C	61 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
22 Sept	31.4 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
23 Sept	32.7 °C	45 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Sept	31.6 °C	52 %	27 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 20
25 Sept after	30.1 °C	54 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Sept after	25.4 °C	67 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
27 Sept after	27.3 °C	61 %	37 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2026

After · 1 Oct 2026

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 13 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³

Days over the guideline26 days

PM1099 µg/m³

Optical depth1.86

WHO 15

3031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 154Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mbanza Congo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2026 to 24 September 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 22 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,868 hectares (68.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mbanza Congo (6,909 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
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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What do you think is wrong?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2026 to 22 September 2026. 154 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