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Saurimo fire, 19 July 2025 Saurimo

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2025, 12:00 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2025 in Saurimo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,489 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 188th largest in Lunda Sul since 2016 (of 240 with a page). Number 151 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Burnt area
5,489ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
19 Jul 2025 – 30 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Jul
2025
Heat detections
199
in a single hotspot: 254 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Jul 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

1920212223242526282930

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
45km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,369 ha in 2016, 2,225 ha in 2017, 1,762 ha in 2018, 48 ha in 2019, 2,138 ha in 2020, 3,064 ha in 2021, 3,449 ha in 2022, 1,490 ha in 2023, 1,128 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,980 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Saurimo where it started
    5,511 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
19 Jul 31.1 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul 30.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jul 29.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 30.1 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul 29.9 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Jul 30.0 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul 30.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul 31.6 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul 31.3 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul 30.5 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul 30.0 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Jul 29.2 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul after 29.2 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug after 29.8 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 30.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Aug after 29.7 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Aug after 29.6 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug after 30.2 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 31.1 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug after 31.0 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug after 31.4 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug after 31.8 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2025
After · 6 Aug 2025

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 17 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM1073 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
17181920212223242526272829303112
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 · 199Every 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 Saurimo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 July 2025 and 30 July 2025: 12 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 5,489 hectares (54.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Saurimo (5,511 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 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

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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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.