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MG · Madagascar · –

Analalava fire, 27 September 2024 Analalava

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2024, 09:56 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2024 in Analalava, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Sofia since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 11 in Madagascar in 2024, of 54.

Burnt area
4,409ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
27 Sept 2024 – 16 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Sept
2024
Heat detections
182
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept16 Oct
16 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2024 · 6 MW · 2 28 Sept 2024 · 71 MW · 2 29 Sept 2024 · 19 MW · 3 2 Oct 2024 · 37 MW · 7 3 Oct 2024 · 54 MW · 12 4 Oct 2024 · 225 MW · 19 5 Oct 2024 · 82 MW · 23 6 Oct 2024 · 220 MW · 14 7 Oct 2024 · 47 MW · 8 8 Oct 2024 · 28 MW · 4 10 Oct 2024 · 25 MW · 5 11 Oct 2024 · 130 MW · 12 12 Oct 2024 · 339 MW · 22 13 Oct 2024 · 302 MW · 23 14 Oct 2024 · 364 MW · 13 15 Oct 2024 · 82 MW · 12 16 Oct 2024 · 4 MW · 1
27 Sept 3 Oct 7 Oct 14 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
43km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 627 ha in 2016, 1,010 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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. Analalava where it started
    4,427 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.5 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.36 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.36 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
27 Sept 33.0 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
28 Sept 31.5 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 21
29 Sept 32.7 °C 44 % 40 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 12
30 Sept 32.6 °C 50 % 36 km/h 3.7 mm Moderate 21
1 Oct 32.6 °C 49 % 42 km/h 1.0 mm Low 10
2 Oct 33.4 °C 43 % 43 km/h 1.3 mm High 22
3 Oct 32.4 °C 43 % 41 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 16
4 Oct 34.0 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
5 Oct 32.5 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
6 Oct 32.1 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Oct 31.4 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 29
8 Oct 30.8 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
9 Oct 32.4 °C 46 % 43 km/h 3.8 mm Low 10
10 Oct 33.9 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Oct 35.5 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
12 Oct 34.9 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 34.0 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.9 mm High 32
14 Oct 31.7 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
15 Oct 31.7 °C 51 % 39 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 18
16 Oct 32.9 °C 45 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Oct after 32.5 °C 50 % 35 km/h 5.4 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2024
After · 23 Oct 2024

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 16 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
30 Sept4 Oct8 Oct12 Oct16 Oct
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 · 182Every 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 Analalava fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2024 to 16 October 2024 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2024 to 16 October 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,409 hectares (44.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Analalava (4,427 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 2 October 2024 → 27 September 2024.

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 2 October 2024 to 16 October 2024. 182 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 2025, 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.