How long did the Quitexe fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2025 and 29 September 2025: 27 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 68,833 hectares (688.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 5 municipalities: Quitexe (41,357 ha, 12 %); Uíge (12,287 ha, 9.1 %); Negage (9,685 ha, 4.5 %); Ambuíla (5,859 ha, 1.2 %); Ambaca (58 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

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 · 2025-09-03 → 2025-09-29

Quitexe fire, 3 September 2025 Quitexe, Uíge, Negage

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2025, 12:40 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2025 in Quitexe, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 68,833 hectares from heat detections, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Uíge since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 5 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quitexe · 2024 Uíge · 2021 Quitexe · 2024 Quitexe · 2026

Burnt area: 68,833ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 3 Sept 2025 – 29 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 5; municipalities
Started on: 3 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 2,450; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept29 Sept

Play back 30 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 27 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

33°high

32km/h · peak gust

44%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 30 Sept.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13,713 ha in 2016, 10,864 ha in 2017, 5,645 ha in 2018, 5,109 ha in 2019, 21,785 ha in 2020, 25,955 ha in 2021, 3,799 ha in 2022, 19,894 ha in 2023, 46,784 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 49,624 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 43% of the area of London (688 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

Quitexe where it started

41,357 ha

12 %
Uíge

12,287 ha

9.1 %
Negage

9,685 ha

4.5 %
Ambuíla

5,859 ha

1.2 %
Ambaca

58 ha

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 2025

Built-up area31 ha

Residents≈ 2,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 31 hectares of built-up land and about 2,100 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
3 Sept	29.0 °C	46 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 18
4 Sept	27.9 °C	52 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
5 Sept	27.3 °C	58 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
6 Sept	26.4 °C	59 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
7 Sept	28.0 °C	54 %	21 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 16
8 Sept	26.5 °C	61 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 15
9 Sept	26.8 °C	57 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
10 Sept	27.9 °C	54 %	22 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 13
11 Sept	27.9 °C	56 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
12 Sept	28.2 °C	55 %	28 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 11
13 Sept	26.3 °C	62 %	25 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 6
14 Sept	27.5 °C	58 %	28 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 7
15 Sept	29.6 °C	48 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
16 Sept	29.7 °C	51 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
17 Sept	25.7 °C	64 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 15
18 Sept	27.5 °C	59 %	31 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 5
19 Sept	29.8 °C	51 %	26 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 7
20 Sept	28.8 °C	55 %	26 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 7
21 Sept	23.3 °C	79 %	24 km/h	3.4 mm	Very low 1
22 Sept	29.1 °C	55 %	23 km/h	1.8 mm	Very low 4
23 Sept	27.8 °C	61 %	30 km/h	1.0 mm	Very low 5
24 Sept	27.8 °C	58 %	25 km/h	2.9 mm	Very low 3
25 Sept	27.7 °C	59 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
26 Sept	29.2 °C	56 %	26 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 6
27 Sept	32.7 °C	44 %	19 km/h	5.9 mm	Very low 2
28 Sept	29.4 °C	56 %	28 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 2
29 Sept	28.1 °C	56 %	30 km/h	0.5 mm	Low 6
30 Sept after	25.5 °C	63 %	23 km/h	4.8 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Aug 2025

After · 6 Oct 2025

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 15 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 130 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak130 µg/m³

Days over the guideline32 days

PM10132 µg/m³

Optical depth1.98

WHO 15

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012

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 · 0Every 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 Quitexe fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2025 and 29 September 2025: 27 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 68,833 hectares (688.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 5 municipalities: Quitexe (41,357 ha, 12 %); Uíge (12,287 ha, 9.1 %); Negage (9,685 ha, 4.5 %); Ambuíla (5,859 ha, 1.2 %); Ambaca (58 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 October 2025 → 29 September 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 27 August 2025 → 3 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 29 September 2025 → 5 October 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 September 2025 → 27 August 2025.

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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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned