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Rivungo fire, 22 August 2019 Rivungo, Mavinga

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2019, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2019 in Rivungo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,255 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 350th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 97 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rivungo · 2022Rivungo · 2023Rivungo · 2022Mavinga · 2022

Burnt area
7,255ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
22 Aug 2019 – 12 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
22 Aug
2019
Heat detections
281
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
226MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug12 Sept
11 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2019 · 75 MW · 3 23 Aug 2019 · 27 MW · 6 24 Aug 2019 · 221 MW · 7 25 Aug 2019 · 17 MW · 2 28 Aug 2019 · 8 MW · 2 29 Aug 2019 · 29 MW · 5 30 Aug 2019 · 4 MW · 1 31 Aug 2019 · 13 MW · 7 1 Sept 2019 · 520 MW · 44 2 Sept 2019 · 2,316 MW · 106 3 Sept 2019 · 238 MW · 35 4 Sept 2019 · 87 MW · 13 5 Sept 2019 · 36 MW · 5 6 Sept 2019 · 73 MW · 8 7 Sept 2019 · 358 MW · 18 8 Sept 2019 · 24 MW · 3 9 Sept 2019 · 66 MW · 8 10 Sept 2019 · 26 MW · 4 11 Sept 2019 · 154 MW · 4
22 Aug 25 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 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

35°high
50km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 826 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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
    6,480 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.2 %
  2. Mavinga
    789 ha reached on 2 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 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)
22 Aug 26.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Aug 26.0 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Aug 26.7 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Aug 27.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug 29.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Aug 31.7 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Aug 32.5 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug 33.1 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Aug 33.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug 33.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Sept 28.8 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Sept 32.1 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Sept 32.3 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept 32.8 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 33.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 34.2 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Sept 31.2 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Sept 25.5 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Sept 26.4 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 28.7 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 30.9 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Sept 34.6 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Sept after 34.8 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Sept after 34.7 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Sept after 35.0 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Sept after 34.1 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Sept after 33.4 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
18 Sept after 33.2 °C 10 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
19 Sept after 33.7 °C 8 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Sept after 33.1 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 Sept after 33.9 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Sept after 35.5 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2019
After · 19 Sept 2019

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 · 281Every 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 22 August 2019 to 12 September 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2019 to 12 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,255 hectares (72.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rivungo (6,480 ha, 0.2 %); Mavinga (789 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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. Start date: 28 August 2019 → 22 August 2019.

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 28 August 2019 to 12 September 2019. 281 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.