How long did the Quirima fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2026 to 21 August 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2026 to 14 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,000 hectares (80.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Quirima (8,048 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2026-07-27 → 2026-08-21

Quirima fire, 27 July 2026 Quirima

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2026, 12:53 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2026 in Quirima, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,000 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 217 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quirima · 2026 Quirima · 2026 Luquembo · 2026 Luquembo · 2026

Burnt area: 8,000ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 27 Jul 2026 – 21 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 27 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 343; in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 115MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul21 Aug

Play back 21 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 1 Aug 7 Aug 11 Aug 15 Aug 20 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

31°high

40km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 618 ha in 2016, 1,006 ha in 2017, 28 ha in 2018, 660 ha in 2020, 81 ha in 2023, 1,124 ha in 2024, 388 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,417 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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

Quirima where it started

8,048 ha reached on 27 Jul

0.8 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
27 Jul	29.1 °C	23 %	28 km/h	High 38
28 Jul	28.2 °C	18 %	30 km/h	Very high 39
29 Jul	28.6 °C	14 %	32 km/h	Very high 40
30 Jul	29.1 °C	22 %	26 km/h	Very high 40
31 Jul	29.9 °C	21 %	27 km/h	Very high 39
1 Aug	29.6 °C	18 %	25 km/h	Very high 40
2 Aug	29.8 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Very high 41
3 Aug	29.4 °C	21 %	27 km/h	Very high 41
4 Aug	29.0 °C	24 %	20 km/h	Very high 39
5 Aug	30.1 °C	20 %	28 km/h	Very high 40
6 Aug	30.5 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Very high 41
7 Aug	30.8 °C	15 %	34 km/h	Very high 43
8 Aug	30.6 °C	18 %	23 km/h	Very high 42
9 Aug	30.4 °C	18 %	23 km/h	Very high 42
10 Aug	30.6 °C	18 %	20 km/h	Very high 43
11 Aug	30.4 °C	18 %	24 km/h	Very high 42
12 Aug	31.0 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
13 Aug	30.1 °C	27 %	35 km/h	Very high 41
14 Aug	30.1 °C	32 %	40 km/h	Very high 38
15 Aug	30.5 °C	28 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
16 Aug	29.6 °C	23 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
17 Aug	30.1 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Very high 41
18 Aug	31.1 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Very high 45
19 Aug	31.1 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Very high 45
20 Aug	30.8 °C	16 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
21 Aug	30.6 °C	20 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
22 Aug after	31.2 °C	24 %	21 km/h	Very high 41
23 Aug after	32.8 °C	19 %	32 km/h	Very high 45
24 Aug after	32.5 °C	20 %	43 km/h	Very high 47
25 Aug after	32.3 °C	23 %	28 km/h	Very high 45
26 Aug after	32.2 °C	24 %	31 km/h	Very high 42
27 Aug after	34.0 °C	18 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
28 Aug after	31.8 °C	24 %	37 km/h	Very high 45
29 Aug after	31.3 °C	22 %	32 km/h	Very high 42
30 Aug after	31.8 °C	28 %	26 km/h	High 38
31 Aug after	30.7 °C	34 %	24 km/h	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jul 2026

After · 28 Aug 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 21 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 134 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 77: 5.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak134 µg/m³

Days over the guideline31 days

PM10138 µg/m³

Optical depth1.61

WHO 15

25262728293031123456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 343Every 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 Quirima fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2026 to 21 August 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2026 to 14 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,000 hectares (80.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Quirima (8,048 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 14 August 2026 → 21 August 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 August 2026 → 27 July 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.

Report an error

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 3 August 2026 to 14 August 2026. 343 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.

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