How long did the Rivungo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2018 to 12 October 2018 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2018 to 9 October 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,573 hectares (65.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Rivungo (6,613 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.

AO · Angola · 2018-09-29 → 2018-10-12

Rivungo fire, 29 September 2018 Rivungo

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2018, 12:53 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2018 in Rivungo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,573 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 408th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 49 in Angola in 2018, of 100.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rivungo · 2026 Rivungo · 2022 Rivungo · 2025 Rivungo · 2022

Burnt area: 6,573ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 29 Sept 2018 – 12 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 29 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 192; in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 172MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept12 Oct

Play back 12 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct

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

55km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,481 ha in 2016, 878 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,073 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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

Rivungo where it started

6,613 ha reached on 29 Sept

0.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
29 Sept	35.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
30 Sept	34.2 °C	19 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
1 Oct	32.0 °C	22 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Oct	32.8 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
3 Oct	34.2 °C	7 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
4 Oct	35.4 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
5 Oct	34.8 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 Oct	35.4 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
7 Oct	34.6 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Oct	33.1 °C	10 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
9 Oct	33.4 °C	11 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
10 Oct	34.1 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
11 Oct	34.9 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Oct	35.9 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
13 Oct after	37.1 °C	11 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
14 Oct after	35.9 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
15 Oct after	35.2 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
16 Oct after	35.9 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 39
17 Oct after	37.0 °C	17 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Oct after	36.9 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Oct after	37.1 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Oct after	35.7 °C	21 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
21 Oct after	34.9 °C	25 %	51 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 53
22 Oct after	30.4 °C	25 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Sept 2018

After · 19 Oct 2018

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.

Detections table · 192Every 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 Rivungo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2018 to 12 October 2018 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2018 to 9 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,573 hectares (65.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Rivungo (6,613 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

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: 9 October 2018 → 12 October 2018.
26 October 2026 Start date: 30 September 2018 → 29 September 2018.

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 30 September 2018 to 9 October 2018. 192 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.

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