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Ombadja fire, 9 September 2020 Ombadja, Curoca

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2020, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2020 in Ombadja, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,322 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 55th largest in Cunene since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 68 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cahama · 2026

Burnt area
6,322ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
9 Sept 2020 – 22 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2020
Heat detections
253
in a single hotspot: 163 MW
Danger at start
72
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
365MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept22 Sept
22 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2020 · 378 MW · 22 10 Sept 2020 · 60 MW · 8 11 Sept 2020 · 229 MW · 21 13 Sept 2020 · 19 MW · 3 14 Sept 2020 · 206 MW · 9 15 Sept 2020 · 251 MW · 21 16 Sept 2020 · 912 MW · 48 17 Sept 2020 · 404 MW · 25 18 Sept 2020 · 1,674 MW · 55 19 Sept 2020 · 56 MW · 27 21 Sept 2020 · 42 MW · 10 22 Sept 2020 · 146 MW · 4
9 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 21 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
54km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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. Ombadja where it started
    6,345 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.5 %
  2. Curoca
    20 ha reached on 18 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area0.22 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (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)
9 Sept 33.6 °C 8 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
10 Sept 32.7 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
11 Sept 32.6 °C 6 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
12 Sept 32.3 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
13 Sept 33.1 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Sept 34.0 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Sept 33.4 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept 33.2 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Sept 34.7 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Sept 35.0 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Sept 36.0 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Sept 36.3 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept 36.3 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Sept 36.3 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
23 Sept after 36.8 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
24 Sept after 36.7 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Sept after 36.8 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
26 Sept after 36.3 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
27 Sept after 35.8 °C 7 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Sept after 35.3 °C 7 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
29 Sept after 35.2 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Sept after 35.7 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
1 Oct after 34.5 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
2 Oct after 34.5 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2020
After · 29 Sept 2020

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 · 253Every 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 Ombadja fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2020 and 22 September 2020: 14 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 6,322 hectares (63.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ombadja (6,345 ha, 0.5 %); Curoca (20 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very 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

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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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. 253 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.