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Muconda fire, 23 July 2019 Muconda

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2019, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2019 in Muconda, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,413 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 58th largest in Lunda Sul since 2016 (of 240 with a page). Number 60 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muconda · 2016Muconda · 2026Muconda · 2020

Burnt area
9,413ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
23 Jul 2019 – 2 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Jul
2019
Heat detections
290
in a single hotspot: 290 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul2 Aug
2 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 2019 · 663 MW · 8 24 Jul 2019 · 1,007 MW · 30 25 Jul 2019 · 12 MW · 2 26 Jul 2019 · 6,413 MW · 81 27 Jul 2019 · 5,458 MW · 83 28 Jul 2019 · 102 MW · 26 29 Jul 2019 · 151 MW · 15 30 Jul 2019 · 265 MW · 23 31 Jul 2019 · 83 MW · 10 1 Aug 2019 · 94 MW · 7 2 Aug 2019 · 9 MW · 5
23 Jul 25 Jul 26 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 31 Jul 2 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
40km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 10 Aug.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 210 ha in 2016, 3,465 ha in 2017, 1,816 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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. Muconda where it started
    9,452 ha reached on 23 Jul
    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)
23 Jul 30.0 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jul 30.0 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jul 30.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul 30.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jul 29.5 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Jul 29.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jul 30.4 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Jul 30.8 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul 31.2 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Aug 31.5 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug 30.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Aug after 29.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 28.2 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
5 Aug after 31.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Aug after 31.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Aug after 31.8 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Aug after 32.7 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Aug after 30.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 28.0 °C 50 % 22 km/h 2.4 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2019
After · 9 Aug 2019

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 · 290Every 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 Muconda fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 July 2019 to 2 August 2019 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 July 2019 to 1 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,413 hectares (94.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Muconda (9,452 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 August 2019 → 2 August 2019.
  2. Start date: 24 July 2019 → 23 July 2019.

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 24 July 2019 to 1 August 2019. 290 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.