Quimbele fire, 8 August 2020 Quimbele
The fire started on 8 August 2020 in Quimbele, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,205 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 23th largest in Uíge since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 13 in Angola in 2020, of 123.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 12,205ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 8 Aug 2020 – 24 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 678
- in a single hotspot: 161 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 615MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 31 Aug.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,087 ha in 2016, 9,768 ha in 2017, 5,166 ha in 2018, 8,512 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,591 ha that had burned before.
- 7,755 ha Quimbele fire, August 2019 13,198 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,375 ha Quimbele fire, August 2017 5,690 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,420 ha Quimbele fire, August 2016 5,550 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Quimbele where it started12,289 ha reached on 6 Aug1.8 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 1,300 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Aug | 31.4 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Aug | 30.0 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Aug | 29.3 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Aug | 31.3 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Aug | 28.9 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Aug | 29.5 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Aug | 30.2 °C | 38 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Aug | 30.9 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Aug | 30.2 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Aug | 32.0 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Aug | 29.9 °C | 43 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Aug | 30.1 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 18 Aug | 32.0 °C | 35 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Aug | 29.1 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 24 |
| 20 Aug | 28.5 °C | 58 % | 23 km/h | 4.3 mm | Low 5 |
| 21 Aug | 32.3 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 22 Aug | 29.5 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 2.7 mm | Low 6 |
| 23 Aug | 28.2 °C | 51 % | 26 km/h | 4.6 mm | Very low 4 |
| 24 Aug | 29.0 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 2.5 mm | Very low 5 |
| 25 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 50 % | 25 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 10 |
| 26 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 50 % | 23 km/h | 2.9 mm | Very low 5 |
| 27 Aug after | 25.6 °C | 61 % | 23 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 3 |
| 28 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 47 % | 28 km/h | 3.1 mm | Very low 3 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 51 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 30 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 42 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 31 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 55 % | 19 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 8 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 678Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,724 haQuimbele9 August 2024 · 16 days · 2 km away
- 13,198 haQuimbeleAugust 2019 · 15 days · 4 km away
- 49,780 haQuimbele14 August 2025 · 31 days · 8 km away
- 75,369 haQuimbele10 August 2026 · 38 days · 15 km away
- 12,096 haQuimbele25 August 2025 · 22 days · 18 km away
- 20,800 haBuengasAugust 2016 · 13 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Quimbele fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2020 and 24 August 2020: 17 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 12,205 hectares (122.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Quimbele (12,289 ha, 1.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
Report an error
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. 678 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.
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.