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MG · Madagascar · –

Toamasina II fire, October 2026 Ambatondrazaka, Toamasina II

Out · last detection 5 Nov 2026, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 28 October 2026 in Toamasina II, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,838 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 55 in Madagascar in 2026, of 122.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
2,838ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
28 Oct 2026 – 5 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
28 Oct
2026
Heat detections
32
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Oct5 Nov
5 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Oct 2026 · 30 MW · 3 1 Nov 2026 · 61 MW · 4 2 Nov 2026 · 515 MW · 19 3 Nov 2026 · 126 MW · 4 5 Nov 2026 · 25 MW · 2
29 Oct 1 Nov 2 Nov 3 Nov 5 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
38km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 6 Nov.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 485 ha in 2017, 566 ha in 2019, 1,010 ha in 2020, 594 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,467 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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. 2,185 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Toamasina II where it started
    667 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.1 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
28 Oct 28.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 3
29 Oct 29.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 1.4 mm Low 10
30 Oct 24.5 °C 64 % 38 km/h 14.4 mm Very low 0
31 Oct 21.3 °C 79 % 33 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 0
1 Nov 28.0 °C 46 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Very low 0
2 Nov 28.2 °C 44 % 35 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 4
3 Nov 27.1 °C 55 % 34 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 2
4 Nov 25.2 °C 59 % 37 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 1
5 Nov 23.7 °C 56 % 38 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 1
6 Nov after 22.7 °C 67 % 37 km/h 4.4 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Oct 2026
After · 8 Nov 2026

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 4 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
26 Oct29 Oct1 Nov4 Nov7 Nov
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 · 32Every 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 Madagascar

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Toamasina II fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 October 2026 to 5 November 2026 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2026 to 5 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,838 hectares (28.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ambatondrazaka (2,185 ha, 0.4 %); Toamasina II (667 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Toamasina II fire still active?
No fire detections since 5 Nov 2026, 11:06 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 4 November 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 3 November 2026 → 5 November 2026.
  2. Name: Toamasina II → Ambatondrazaka.
  3. Name: Ambatondrazaka → Toamasina II.
  4. Name: Toamasina II → Ambatondrazaka.
  5. Name: Ambatondrazaka → Toamasina II.
  6. Page published (2,836 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 1 November 2026 to 5 November 2026. 32 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.