How long did the N'harea fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2026 to 19 September 2026 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2026 to 19 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,145 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered N'harea (8,198 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

AO · Angola · 2026-08-26 → 2026-09-19

N'harea fire, 26 August 2026 N'harea

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2026, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2026 in N'harea, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,145 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Bié since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 210 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 8,145ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 26 Aug 2026 – 19 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 26 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 228; in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 132MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug19 Sept

Play back 19 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 2 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 18 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

49km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.3 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 532 ha in 2016, 581 ha in 2019, 1,304 ha in 2020, 218 ha in 2021, 13 ha in 2022, 542 ha in 2023, 1,824 ha in 2024, 6,375 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,719 ha that had burned before.

986 ha N'harea fire, September 2025 5,446 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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

8,198 ha reached on 26 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 area6.5 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.5 hectares of built-up land and about 400 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)
26 Aug	31.2 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Aug	33.2 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Aug	31.8 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
29 Aug	30.7 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Aug	30.8 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 Aug	29.3 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Sept	31.6 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Sept	32.3 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Sept	30.5 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Sept	29.6 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
5 Sept	30.0 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	High 29
6 Sept	32.0 °C	26 %	17 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
7 Sept	30.9 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.5 mm	High 36
8 Sept	31.2 °C	32 %	49 km/h	1.2 mm	High 28
9 Sept	30.5 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Sept	30.6 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Sept	31.1 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Sept	30.4 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	High 31
13 Sept	29.8 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
14 Sept	32.8 °C	30 %	21 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
15 Sept	29.0 °C	37 %	28 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 11
16 Sept	31.5 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
17 Sept	31.7 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Sept	29.9 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
19 Sept	28.8 °C	42 %	33 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 14
20 Sept after	28.2 °C	44 %	30 km/h	7.3 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Aug 2026

After · 26 Sept 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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 85: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³

Days over the guideline29 days

PM10112 µg/m³

Optical depth1.93

WHO 15

242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122

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 · 228Every 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 26 August 2026 to 19 September 2026 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2026 to 19 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,145 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered N'harea (8,198 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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 2 September 2026 to 19 September 2026. 228 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