How long did the Andilamena fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2026 to 8 October 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2026 to 1 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,641 hectares (26.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Andilamena (2,659 ha, 0.3 %).

Is the Andilamena fire still active?

No fire detections since 8 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.

MG · Madagascar · 2026-09-20 → 2026-10-08

Andilamena fire, 20 September 2026 Andilamena

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2026 in Andilamena, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,641 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 35th largest in Alaotra-Mangoro since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 60 in Madagascar in 2026, of 109.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 2,641ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 20 Sept 2026 – 8 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 20 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 53; in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 29MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept8 Oct

Play back 8 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 4 Oct 8 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

30°high

53km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 822 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (26 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

Andilamena where it started

2,659 ha reached on 20 Sept

0.3 %

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 area0.21 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.21 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
20 Sept	22.0 °C	54 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Sept	25.3 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Sept	27.3 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
23 Sept	27.7 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Sept	28.2 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Sept	26.4 °C	37 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Sept	26.4 °C	38 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Sept	27.6 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Sept	27.6 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Sept	28.4 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Sept	27.1 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Oct	26.6 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Oct	27.6 °C	35 %	51 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
3 Oct	26.6 °C	38 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 Oct	26.4 °C	39 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Oct	27.2 °C	39 %	49 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
6 Oct	24.6 °C	47 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Oct	26.2 °C	41 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Oct	30.1 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Oct after	30.7 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
10 Oct after	28.0 °C	43 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
11 Oct after	25.4 °C	45 %	52 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
12 Oct after	26.0 °C	37 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Oct after	25.3 °C	45 %	60 km/h	0.7 mm	High 28
14 Oct after	25.9 °C	38 %	61 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
15 Oct after	24.0 °C	45 %	54 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
16 Oct after	25.4 °C	38 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Oct after	23.6 °C	47 %	61 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
18 Oct after	24.4 °C	46 %	47 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Sept 2026

After · 15 Oct 2026

Before After

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 10 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1030 µg/m³

Optical depth0.55

WHO 15

1819202122232425262728293012345678910

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 · 53Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Andilamena fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2026 to 8 October 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2026 to 1 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,641 hectares (26.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Andilamena (2,659 ha, 0.3 %).
Is the Andilamena fire still active?: No fire detections since 8 Oct 2026, 11:13 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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 21 September 2026 to 1 October 2026. 53 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.

Where it burned