How long did the N'harea fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2025 to 22 September 2025 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2025 to 15 September 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,979 hectares (79.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered N'harea (8,025 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2025-08-21 → 2025-09-22

N'harea fire, 21 August 2025 N'harea

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2025, 11:48 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2025 in N'harea, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,979 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 74 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Compare with…

Suggestions: N'harea · 2025 N'harea · 2026 N'harea · 2026 Andulo · 2026

Burnt area: 7,979ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 33days; 21 Aug 2025 – 22 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 21 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 380; in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug22 Sept

Play back 22 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 26 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 5 Sept 10 Sept 15 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

33°high

52km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 21 Sept.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,375 ha in 2016, 49 ha in 2022, 1,252 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,905 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (80 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

N'harea where it started

8,025 ha reached on 21 Aug

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 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)
28 Aug	26.9 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
29 Aug	30.6 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Aug	31.7 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
31 Aug	30.9 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
1 Sept	30.3 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Sept	31.0 °C	16 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
3 Sept	29.9 °C	14 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
4 Sept	30.8 °C	16 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
5 Sept	31.2 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Sept	30.7 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Sept	30.8 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Sept	31.5 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Sept	29.5 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Sept	30.2 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Sept	32.6 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Sept	31.0 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Sept	28.6 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
14 Sept	28.3 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
15 Sept	31.7 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Sept	31.8 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Sept	29.6 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Sept	31.7 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Sept	30.7 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 38
20 Sept	30.5 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
21 Sept	29.0 °C	41 %	26 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Aug 2025

After · 29 Sept 2025

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 3 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak122 µg/m³

Days over the guideline24 days

PM10124 µg/m³

Optical depth2.38

WHO 15

262728293031123456789101112131415161718

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 · 380Every 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 N'harea fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2025 to 22 September 2025 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2025 to 15 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,979 hectares (79.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered N'harea (8,025 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 15 September 2025 → 22 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 28 August 2025 → 21 August 2025.

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 28 August 2025 to 15 September 2025. 380 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