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Ambositra fire, September 2018 Ambositra

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2018, 10:51 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2018 in Ambositra, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,006 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Amoron'i Mania since 2016 (of 10 with a page). Number 3 in Madagascar in 2018, of 48.

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Suggestions: Ambositra · 2022Ambositra · 2025Ambositra · 2022Ambositra · 2025

Burnt area
7,006ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
16 Sept 2018 – 26 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Sept
2018
Heat detections
342
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
326MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept26 Sept
27 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2018 · 232 MW · 14 17 Sept 2018 · 292 MW · 35 18 Sept 2018 · 722 MW · 70 19 Sept 2018 · 195 MW · 31 20 Sept 2018 · 1,038 MW · 61 21 Sept 2018 · 404 MW · 31 22 Sept 2018 · 114 MW · 9 23 Sept 2018 · 279 MW · 27 24 Sept 2018 · 228 MW · 14 25 Sept 2018 · 173 MW · 11 26 Sept 2018 · 140 MW · 7 27 Sept 2018 · 92 MW · 13
16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 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

24°high
43km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,721 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Ambositra where it started
    7,052 ha reached on 16 Sept
    2.4 %

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 area1.9 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 residents (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)
16 Sept 23.0 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Sept 22.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
18 Sept 23.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Sept 22.4 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Sept 23.5 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Sept 22.7 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Sept 22.9 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Sept 23.2 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Sept 23.6 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Sept 21.8 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Sept 22.9 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Sept after 22.5 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Sept after 21.0 °C 48 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Sept after 21.2 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Sept after 18.6 °C 46 % 47 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
1 Oct after 15.4 °C 73 % 45 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2018
After · 3 Oct 2018

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 · 342Every 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 Ambositra fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2018 and 26 September 2018: 11 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 7,006 hectares (70.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ambositra (7,052 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 342 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 (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.