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Quipungo fire, 31 August 2017 Quipungo, Matala

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2017, 13:25 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2017 in Quipungo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,457 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Huíla since 2016 (of 70 with a page). Number 59 in Angola in 2017, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Matala · 2016Quipungo · 2017Quipungo · 2024Matala · 2024

Burnt area
7,457ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
31 Aug 2017 – 16 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
31 Aug
2017
Heat detections
287
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
311MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug16 Sept
16 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2017 · 1,266 MW · 51 1 Sept 2017 · 1,950 MW · 97 2 Sept 2017 · 104 MW · 35 3 Sept 2017 · 116 MW · 19 4 Sept 2017 · 197 MW · 12 5 Sept 2017 · 85 MW · 11 6 Sept 2017 · 287 MW · 22 7 Sept 2017 · 33 MW · 8 8 Sept 2017 · 19 MW · 2 9 Sept 2017 · 27 MW · 2 10 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 1 13 Sept 2017 · 113 MW · 11 15 Sept 2017 · 102 MW · 8 16 Sept 2017 · 48 MW · 8
31 Aug 1 Sept 2 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 15 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

37°high
46km/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

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,177 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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. Quipungo where it started
    4,113 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.5 %
  2. Matala
    3,397 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
31 Aug 34.6 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Sept 34.3 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Sept 34.7 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Sept 33.9 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Sept 33.3 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Sept 33.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Sept 32.5 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Sept 35.4 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 36.8 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
9 Sept 36.3 °C 6 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
10 Sept 35.8 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
11 Sept 35.5 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
12 Sept 36.3 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
13 Sept 34.9 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Sept 34.9 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Sept 34.6 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept 35.8 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept after 36.3 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Sept after 35.6 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
19 Sept after 36.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Sept after 35.6 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept after 35.6 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
22 Sept after 36.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Sept after 37.2 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Sept after 36.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Sept after 36.7 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Sept after 35.0 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2017
After · 23 Sept 2017

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 · 287Every 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 Quipungo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2017 to 16 September 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2017 to 9 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,457 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Quipungo (4,113 ha, 0.5 %); Matala (3,397 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

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: 9 September 2017 → 16 September 2017.

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 31 August 2017 to 9 September 2017. 287 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 2015, 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.