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Rivungo fire, 20 September 2017 Rivungo, Dirico

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2017, 12:59 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2017 in Rivungo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,154 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 61th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 10 in Angola in 2017, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rivungo · 2021Rivungo · 2021Rivungo · 2026Rivungo · 2019

Burnt area
17,154ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
20 Sept 2017 – 28 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
20 Sept
2017
Heat detections
541
in a single hotspot: 345 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 2017 · 815 MW · 155 21 Sept 2017 · 3,681 MW · 119 22 Sept 2017 · 1,291 MW · 64 23 Sept 2017 · 2,665 MW · 55 24 Sept 2017 · 362 MW · 55 25 Sept 2017 · 221 MW · 15 26 Sept 2017 · 823 MW · 63 27 Sept 2017 · 145 MW · 9 28 Sept 2017 · 45 MW · 6
20 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,291 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (172 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. Rivungo where it started
    17,335 ha reached on 20 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Dirico
    11 ha reached on 20 Sept
    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 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)
20 Sept 35.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Sept 34.6 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
22 Sept 34.6 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Sept 35.6 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Sept 35.9 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Sept 36.3 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept 36.4 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Sept 34.9 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Sept 36.0 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
29 Sept after 32.5 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Sept after 33.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Oct after 33.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Oct after 34.2 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Oct after 36.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Oct after 37.1 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Oct after 34.0 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 55
6 Oct after 28.1 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Oct after 32.5 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
8 Oct after 34.7 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Sept 2017
After · 5 Oct 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 · 541Every 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 Rivungo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2017 to 28 September 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 September 2017 to 27 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,154 hectares (171.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rivungo (17,335 ha, 0.6 %); Dirico (11 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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: 27 September 2017 → 28 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 September 2017 to 27 September 2017. 541 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.