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Quibala fire, 10 August 2022 Quibala

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2022, 11:59 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2022 in Quibala, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,405 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 49th largest in Cuanza Sul since 2016 (of 79 with a page). Number 75 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quibala · 2026Quibala · 2025Quibala · 2025Quibala · 2026

Burnt area
6,405ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
10 Aug 2022 – 23 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Aug
2022
Heat detections
212
in a single hotspot: 174 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
291MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug23 Aug
23 Aug 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2022 · 1,401 MW · 49 12 Aug 2022 · 817 MW · 63 13 Aug 2022 · 85 MW · 17 14 Aug 2022 · 32 MW · 5 15 Aug 2022 · 410 MW · 25 16 Aug 2022 · 410 MW · 28 17 Aug 2022 · 45 MW · 5 18 Aug 2022 · 23 MW · 5 19 Aug 2022 · 76 MW · 5 20 Aug 2022 · 14 MW · 4 22 Aug 2022 · 26 MW · 2 23 Aug 2022 · 157 MW · 4
11 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 22 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

28°high
46km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,190 ha in 2016, 1,107 ha in 2017, 145 ha in 2018, 3,622 ha in 2019, 3,431 ha in 2020, 1,076 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,620 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 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. Quibala where it started
    6,447 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.6 %

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 area1.9 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 300 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)
10 Aug 27.4 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Aug 26.2 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Aug 27.0 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Aug 25.4 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Aug 27.4 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Aug 27.6 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Aug 26.7 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Aug 27.2 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug 27.4 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Aug 27.5 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Aug 27.1 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Aug 25.8 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Aug 27.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Aug 25.9 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug after 26.7 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Aug after 26.7 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Aug after 25.5 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Aug after 27.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2022
After · 30 Aug 2022

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 9 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 327 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 164: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak327 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10467 µg/m³
Optical depth2.01
891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 212Every 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 Quibala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2022 to 23 August 2022 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2022 to 17 August 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,405 hectares (64.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Quibala (6,447 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 August 2022 → 23 August 2022.

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 10 August 2022 to 17 August 2022. 212 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.